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 Cornell University Library 
 .B21 1907 
 
 BR45 
 Reproach oj {,*|f. 
 
 Into 
 
 3 1924 029 214 842 
 
 din 
 
THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL 
 
THE REPROACH OF 
 
 1 rlrL (jrOollld-/ AN INQUIRY INTO 
 THE APPARENT FAILURE OF CHRISTIANITY 
 AS A GENERAL RULE OF LIFE AND CONDUCT, 
 WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE PRESENT TIME 
 
 BEING THE 
 
 BAMPTON LECTURES 
 
 FOR THE YEAR 1907 
 
 BY THE REV. 
 
 JAMES H. F. PEILE, M.A. 
 
 FELLOW AND PRAELECTOR OP UNIVERSITY COLLEGB, OXFORD 
 AND EXAMINING CHAPLAIN TO THE LORD BISHOP OF WORCESTER 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON 
 
 NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA 
 
 1907 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
The original of tiiis book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/cletails/cu31924029214842 
 
TO MY FATHER 
 
EXTRACT 
 
 FROM THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT 
 
 OF THE LATE 
 
 REV. JOHN BAMPTON 
 
 CANON OF SALISBURY 
 
 " . . .1 give and bequeath my Lands and Estates to the Chancellor, 
 Masters, and Scholars of the University of Oxford for ever, to have 
 and to hold all and singular the said Lands or Estates upon trust, 
 and to the intents and purposes hereinafter mentioned ; that is to 
 say, I will and appoint that the Vice-Chancellor of the University of 
 Oxford for the time being shall take and receive all the rents, issues, 
 and profits thereof, and (after all taxes, reparations, and necessary 
 deductions made) that he pay all the remainder to the endowment of 
 eight Divinity Lecture Sermons, to be established for ever in the said 
 University, and to be performed in the manner following : 
 
 " I direct and appoint, that, upon the first Tuesday in Easter 
 Term, a Lecturer be yearly chosen by the Heads of Colleges only, 
 and by no others, in the room adjoining to the Printing-House, 
 between the hours of ten in the morning and two in the afternoon, to 
 preach eight Divinity Lecture Sermons, the year following, at St. 
 Mary's in Oxford, between the commencement of the last month 
 in Lent Term, and the end of the third week in Act Term. 
 
 "Also I direct and appoint, that the eight Divinity Lecture 
 Sermons shall be preached upon either of the following Subjects — to 
 confirm and establish the Christian Faith, and to confute all heretics 
 
viii EXTRACT FROM CANON BAMPTON'S WILL 
 
 and schismatics — upon the divine authority of the holy Scriptures — 
 upon the authority of the writings of the primitive Fathers, as to the 
 faith and practice of the primitive Church — upon the Divinity of our 
 Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ — upon the Divinity of the Holy Ghost 
 — upon the Articles of the Christian Faith, as comprehended in the 
 Apostles' and Nicene Creeds. 
 
 " Also I direct, that thirty copies of the eight Divinity Lecture 
 Sermons shall be always printed, within two months after they are 
 preached ; and one copy shall be given to the Chancellor of the 
 University, and one copy to the Head of every College, and one 
 copy to the Mayor of the city of Oxford, and one copy to be put into 
 the Bodleian Library ; and the expense of printing them shall be 
 paid out of the revenue of the Land or Estates given for estabhshing 
 the Divinity Lecture Sermons ; and the Preacher shall not be paid, 
 nor be entitled to the revenue, before they are printed. 
 
 " Also I direct and appoint, that no person shall be qualified to 
 preach the Divinity Lecture Sermons, unless he hath taken the 
 degree of Master of Arts at least, in one of the two Universities of 
 Oxford or Cambridge ; and that the same person shall never preach 
 the Divinity Lecture Sermons twice." 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The explicit directions of the Founder's Will relieve a 
 Bampton Lecturer from the necessity of making the 
 conventional apology for the publication of his sermons. 
 Nevertheless, I admit that I am glad my book should 
 go out to a wider audience than that which heard me 
 patiently at St. Mary's. I hope that it will be read by 
 many persons who are interested in religious questions. 
 I hope that it will trouble their peace of mind ; and 
 make them realize that the true " Crisis in the Church " is 
 not ceremonial, nor, in any narrow sense, doctrinal ; and 
 that it concerns all Christians as much as it concerns 
 Anglicans. 
 
 I believe that the Church stands even now at the 
 parting of the ways ; that, humanly speaking, the next 
 few years will decide whether it is to shrink into a 
 pietistic sect, or spread and develop, until it is actually 
 the English people viewed in its relation to God. 
 And I am not afraid to add that upon the Church of 
 England, pre-eminently among religious bodies, lies the 
 responsibility of making the great venture, or the great 
 refusal. In making this claim, I think I am not 
 
X PREFACE 
 
 inspired by any narrow spirit of party. If I regard the 
 Church of England as the appointed instrument of God 
 for this end, it is not on account of its established 
 position, its wealth, or its social influence ; but because, 
 with all its shortcomings, it has never lost the essential 
 belief in the Church Catholic. But the event alone can 
 justify or condemn the Church ; and the issue lies in the 
 hands, not of the few, but of the many, the rank and file 
 of Christians, lay and cleric. 
 
 It is perhaps not without significance, that, in the 
 election of a Bampton Lecturer, the choice of the Heads 
 of Houses should have fallen, for this year, on one who 
 can claim no distinction as a Scholar, or a Philosopher, 
 or a Theologian. At any rate it emphasizes what I have 
 tried to make a leading thought in my Lectures, that 
 Eeligion is the immediate business, not of the expert 
 only, but of the average human being. At the same 
 time my readers must bear in mind, that, wherever my 
 argument obliges me to meddle with technical matters, 
 I speak as a layman, and occasionally as a fool. For 
 instance, I am told that I have entirely mistaken the 
 character of the Eitschlian philosophy : and I think it is 
 very probable. I maintain, however, that I have not 
 misrepresented the teaching of certain nebulous religion- 
 ists who prophesy in the name of Pragmatism. Again, 
 there are passages which my more advanced Socialist 
 friends deplore as unpractical ; and other passages, in 
 
PREFACE xi 
 
 whicli I am held to be unjust to non-Christian methods 
 of reform and progress. Freely admitting mj defi- 
 ciencies, I am inclined to let the Lectures stand, for the 
 most part, as they were delivered — if for no other 
 reason, because my mistakes may be instructive, as 
 illustrating the point of view of that common factor in 
 human society, the ordinary educated man who is not 
 a specialist. 
 
 Mere considerations of space forbid my mentioning 
 by name more than a very few of those to whose written 
 or spoken thoughts I have owed guidance and enlighten- 
 ment. 
 
 When writing on the conditions of life and labour 
 among the poor, I have supplemented my reading, and 
 some little personal experience, by drawing unsparingly 
 on the first-hand knowledge of friends who are actually 
 working among the poor in London. I should like to 
 make grateful mention of the Kev. H. St. J. WooUcombe, 
 Head of the Oxford House; of Mr. A. H. Paterson, 
 of the Oxford Medical Mission in Bermondsey ; and of 
 Mr. W. H. Beveridge, lately Vice- Principal of Toynbee 
 HaU. 
 
 Those who are best acquainted with the work of Dr. 
 Sanday will be best able to judge the extent of my 
 indebtedness to him. But I have to acknowledge, not 
 only the invaluable help which I have derived from his 
 books, but also his extreme kindness in looking over the 
 
xu PREFACE 
 
 paragraphs in which I have dealt tentatively with the 
 subject which he has made his own. 
 
 Finally, I desire to record my gratitude to the Eev. 
 Charles Plummer, Fellow of Corpus Christi College, for 
 his patient and sympathetic labours in correcting my 
 proofs : a gratitude which is not at all diminished by the 
 knowledge that he finds his chief pleasure in doing kind 
 services for his friends. 
 
 London, 
 
 July, 1907. 
 
SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS 
 
 LECTURE I 
 
 The Facts 
 
 PAGE 
 
 1. DifBculty of the subject chosen 3 
 
 It involves the question of the continued existence of Christianity . 4 
 
 Metaphysical problem of the existence of sin in the believer . . . ib. 
 
 The practical problem 6 
 
 2. Lives of professing Christians the cause of the decay of religion : 
 
 (a) Among the working classes 7 
 
 (J) Among the educated 8 
 
 3. Effect of Christianity for good not deniable : 
 
 (a) Upon society : 
 
 In the Roman Empire 9 
 
 In Early England ; and ib. 
 
 Throughout the course of European history, even when 
 
 unacknowledged 10 
 
 (6) Upon the individual : 
 
 The guarding and reforming power of grace 11 
 
 These effects a ground for hope and thankfulness 12 
 
 But the general result appears inadequate when viewed in the 
 light of: 
 
 (a) The effect of Christianity upon individuals ib. 
 
 (b) Its actual merits as a rule of life 13 
 
 (c) Its alleged origin ib. 
 
 This disproportion is the problem we have to attempt 14 
 
 4. The history of Christianity provisionally divided into two periods . . ib. 
 
 (a) The Age of Faith, in which Christianity was accepted as 
 
 dogmatically true 15 
 
 As ethically supreme ib. 
 
 (J) The Age of Doubt, which may be supposed to begin with the 
 
 Protestant Eeformation 16 
 
xiv CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 But dissatisfaction is not really intellectual, but moral in its origin 17 
 
 Three stages discernible 18 
 
 (a) Acceptance of Christianity as conterminous with the Church. 
 
 (5) Questioning of the claims of a particular Church, 
 (c) Questioning of the claims of Christianity. 
 
 The present intellectual and social unrest marks the desire of 
 
 mankind for a gospel »&• 
 
 What is that gospel to be ? 19 
 
 5. Is it to be found in : 
 
 (a) A new religion ? ib. 
 
 (6) The re-statement of Christian dogma in terms of twentieth- 
 
 century thought ? 20 
 
 (c) A return to the teaching of Christ ? 22 
 
 That teaching is simple and practical. 
 
 To some it seems too simple and unsatisfying. 
 
 To others impracticable. 
 
 But its conflict with ordinary standards is an argument in its 
 
 favour 23 
 
 And obedience to it is the hope of Christianity i6. 
 
 LECTURE II 
 
 The Historic Basis of Chkistian Belief 
 
 1. St. Luke's Preface a guide to New Testament criticism 27 
 
 The previous question, whether the historic truth of the Gospels is 
 
 a necessary condition of Christian belief and moraUty .... 28 
 
 Dr. Inge's criticism of Loisy and Tyrrell ih. 
 
 And of Ritschlian Protestantism 29 
 
 The strength and weakness of the popular Pragmatism 30 
 
 The Person of the Historic Christ is the centre of Christianity ... 31 
 
 2. Ethical systems which ignore the religious sanction 32 
 
 Objections 33 
 
 (a) Seliishness cannot be the basis of morality. 
 (6) Christ reveals a new moral principle. 
 The working of the Spirit of God in Greek and Oriental religions 
 
 and philosophies is not denied xb. 
 
CONTENTS XV 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Estimate of Plato's influence as a moralist 34 
 
 Influence of Buddhism on character 35 
 
 Contrast between Buddhist self-ajimiA«7aWo« and Christian self-reaM- 
 
 zation ib. 
 
 Doctrine of the infinite value of each human soul peculiar to Chris- 
 tianity, and essential 36 
 
 3. Examination of two systems of secularist ethic : 
 
 (a) The empirical : commonly found in practice 37 
 
 Description of it in Plato's " Kepublio " ib. 
 
 Based on the balance of advantage, it fails as a moral sanction 
 
 in strong temptation 38 
 
 And seeks for transcendental sanctions to maintain itself . 39 
 The Church, by lending its sanction to the ethic of expe- 
 diency, discredits the true ethic of the Gospel 40 
 
 And drives men to : 
 
 (6) The modern scientific ethic 41 
 
 Based on an inteUeotual sanction, and 
 
 Asking of selfishness a high degree of self-sacrifice. 
 
 4. The claim of non-Christian systems to retain all that is best in 
 
 Christian morality criticized 42 
 
 This claim as yet untested by experience : 
 
 But we observe that certain typical virtues tend to be eliminated. 
 
 And the New Morality is professedly " careless of the single hfe," 
 
 while " careful of the type " ib. 
 
 The " general conscience " no sufficient safeguard against this 
 
 tendency 43 
 
 But Science, especially Medicine, has been hitherto mercifully illogical ib. 
 5. A brief review of the present state of New Testament criticism 
 (o) Literary criticism 
 
 At first hostile and destructive 44 
 
 Has returned to a more conservative position 45 
 
 With reservations 'J- 
 
 (J) Historical criticism ib. 
 
 (c) Ultimate problems 46 
 
 Position of contemporary German theology 47 
 
 Its treatment of the Person of Christ ib. 
 
 Some conclusions from the accepted New Testament 48 
 
 Texts as to the Divinity of Christ 49 
 
xvi CONTENTS 
 
 LECTURE III 
 
 The Spiritual Need of Humanity 
 
 PAGE 
 
 1. A gospel is truth whicli satisfies a want 53 
 
 Man's material desires force him to acquire a knowledge of nature . ih. 
 His spiritual longings unsatisfied lead him to seek after the know- 
 ledge of God 54 
 
 2. Sin: 
 
 Difiicult to define, but best accounted for by the Christian doctrine . 55 
 
 Its reahty »'J. 
 
 Dicta of " Orthodox: Science " upon Sin and Original Sin .... 56 
 
 Criticized as inconsistent with the facts of human nature .... 57 
 
 Different estimates of sin in different ages 58 
 
 3. Sin dangerous if disregarded iS. 
 
 The sense of sin manifested in apparently causeless unhappiness . . 69 
 
 In a sense of the misery of the world ih. 
 
 And of personal unworthiness, and dissatisfaction ib. 
 
 Due to the lack of a guiding principle 60 
 
 Resultant attitude towards religion ih. 
 
 ReUef found in self-disclosure ib. 
 
 Need of wisdom and sincerity in dealing with such cases . . . •. 61 
 
 Their relation to external causes and to bodilj' health ib. 
 
 The condition described is not pathological but spiritual .... ih. 
 Is the Church called upon to find some authorized means of dealing 
 
 with it? 62 
 
 4. The Incarnation gives a meaning and purpose to human life . . . ih. 
 
 It convinces of sin and offers the remedy 63 
 
 And solves the mystery of suffering 64 
 
 Even in the light of nature, pain is accepted : 
 
 (a) As the common lot of all ih. 
 
 (h) As warning men of danger 65 
 
 (c) As refining, strengthening, uniting ih. 
 
 In the light of Christ's sufferings its value and purpose become clear 66 
 
 Christ's mental suffering greater than His physical ib. 
 
 He was misunderstood by His disciples 67 
 
 And is misunderstood by present-day Christians ih. 
 
 The " Angel of the Passion " . • »j 
 
CONTENTS xvii 
 
 PAGE 
 
 5. Partial failure of the Incarnation to fulfil this purpose ascribed to 
 
 two causes 68 
 
 (a) The Intellectual Fallacy. 
 (5) The Magical Fallacy. 
 The Intellectual Fallacy makes theology equivalent to religion : 
 
 Its temptations and dangers ib. 
 
 The Magical Fallacy a superstitious belief in the absolute value of 
 
 formulas 69 
 
 As old as the human race, and found both in the Jewish religion 
 
 and in Christianity ib. 
 
 An example 70 
 
 The magical value of formulas dismissed in our ideas of the physical 
 
 world, but partly retained in a higher sphere 71 
 
 Holy Communion ib. 
 
 Neither fallacy finds any support in the teaching of Christ .... 72 
 
 LECTURE IV 
 
 Wak and Tbade 
 
 1. Christianity in great societies 75 
 
 Trade and war closely akin 76 
 
 Sometimes in form, and essentially in spirit 77 
 
 Their accepted principles at variance with Christianity ib. 
 
 2. Wak: 
 
 Is it ever justifiable ? 78 
 
 Costly armaments defended as a guarantee of peace ib. 
 
 " Thou shalt not kill" ib. 
 
 The question not really simple ib. 
 
 Exaggerated respect for human life is modern 79 
 
 And not essentially Christian ib. 
 
 Indicates a waning, of faith 80 
 
 Dr. Gore on the Sermon on the Mount 81 
 
 Duty of personal self-effacement ib. 
 
 Duty of maintaining the moral order of society ib. 
 
 Other evils must disappear before war 82 
 
 Distinction between war and murder ib. 
 
xviii CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Christian soldier 83 
 
 The good side of chivalry ^• 
 
 3. Its other side 84 
 
 MOitarism a possible danger in England 85 
 
 Various motives for war 86 
 
 Commercial wars, and the relations of a great empire to uncivilized 
 
 races *&• 
 
 Conditions of a just war 87 
 
 4. Teabe : 
 
 Apparently more Christian than war : actually less so 88 
 
 Christian principle excluded from business even by good men ... ih. 
 
 F. D. Maurice on the true function of Christianity 89 
 
 Trusts »J. 
 
 No blessing on monstrous wealth 90 
 
 The millionaire as philanthropist ib. 
 
 5. TJnrestraiaed competition and its effects 91 
 
 Relations of capital and labour ib. 
 
 Misrepresentation and dishonest work 92 
 
 Adulteration ib. 
 
 Secret commissions and bribery 93 
 
 The customer ultimately responsible 94 
 
 A passion for cheapness is not thrift ib. 
 
 Fallacies of cheapness 95 
 
 Competition and Co-operation .... ib. 
 
 Trade Unions ib. 
 
 The new power of the labouring class can only be used safely on 
 
 Christian principles 96 
 
 Logical consequences of the doctrine of the Fatherhood of God . . ib. 
 
 LECTURE V 
 
 Social Questions 
 
 1. Christ's teaching is criticized as anti-social 101 
 
 The precepts of the Sermon on the Mount are inconsistent with the 
 
 organization of society as we know it ij. 
 
 But are not on that account to be dismissed at once as impracticable 102 
 
 Their bearing on personal conduct t'j. 
 
CONTENTS XIX 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Christ's attitude to social questions was partly determined by tlie 
 
 external circumstances of His life 103 
 
 And that of the first Christians by the expectation of an early Parousia 104 
 
 2. But this is not a complete account «i6- 
 
 Our Lord's teaching is at once more universal and more particular 
 
 than modern methods 105 
 
 More particular, as dealing with the individual soul : 
 
 More universal, as dealing, not with separate acts, but with character 
 
 His precepts compared to the laws of health 106 
 
 Ours to pathology i6. 
 
 Selfishness is the disease which has to be cured 107 
 
 To recognize it as a normal state is hopeless iJ. 
 
 The alternative to Christianity is pessimism ih. 
 
 3. Contrast between Christ's teaching and popular ideas about wealth 
 
 and poverty : 
 
 To us the poor are the " lower classes " 108 
 
 To Him they are the distinctively spiritual element in the common- 
 wealth i^' 
 
 This conception must modify our views : 
 
 (o) Upon personal expenditure 109 
 
 (6) Upon philanthropy *&• 
 
 " Dead-lift " methods are ineffectual and dangerous 110 
 
 The worst evil of extreme poverty is not physical suffering, but moral 
 
 and spiritual degradation Ill 
 
 Condition of the very poor in town and country ii. 
 
 Compared with slavery 112 
 
 Duty of the individual and the State in face of these conditions . . 113 
 
 The problem of the unemployed i^- 
 
 4. The state of things equally intolerable for the rich, if they realize it . 114 
 
 And spiritually perilous in proportion as they tolerate it xb. 
 
 Christians are reckless in their pursuit of wealth 115 
 
 And inconsistent in the value they put on it io, 
 
 Frank admiration for great wealth H" 
 
 General desire for increase of comfort H' 
 
 Luxury has abeady affected art and literature «'*• 
 
 And threatens deeper springs of character 118 
 
 5. Eeligious aspect of the social problem : 
 
 Question of Christian obligation *"■ 
 
 Various answers *"■ 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Almsgiving; useless and mischievous without personal sympathy . . 119 
 
 Charity organization *°' 
 
 Wickedness of preaching contentment to the poor until they are 
 
 given elementary justice '-^^ 
 
 Dr. Gore on the principle of justice 
 
 ife. 
 
 LECTURE VI 
 
 Anaecht kot the Cure 
 
 Liberal theology has only emphasized the real difficulty of Chris- 
 tianity, the ethical 125 
 
 Loss to the Church of sincere men who are not prepared to make 
 
 the sacrifice 126 
 
 Valuable as defining the issue 127 
 
 Is the Christian bound to reject social organization? to become an 
 
 anarchist ib. 
 
 Various kinds of anarchy considered : 
 
 ia) Violently subversive ih. 
 
 (6) Quietist or literary; opposed to Christianity as pessimism to 
 
 hope 128 
 
 (c) Apolaustic ; claims a freedom almost identical in phrase with 
 
 Gospel freedom 129 
 
 The contrast in emphasis ih. 
 
 Discipline is still needed — as in the artistic and literary, so in the 
 
 moral sphere 130 
 
 Analogy of evolution 131 
 
 The danger of anarchy in religion 132 
 
 Duty of the Christian to existing society : 
 
 In business 133 
 
 In politics i\. 
 
 In doubtful cases, guidance will not be found in specific precepts of 
 
 our Lord, but in His general teaching on oSia^opa 134 
 
 Maniohaean doctrine of oSiac/jopa 135 
 
 Christian doctrine : that all things are ours, and God's ib. 
 
 It is a duty to use political power 136 
 
 But not superstitiously 137 
 
 Any form of government may be Christian i5. 
 
 Eepresentative government favourable to Christianity 138 
 
CONTENTS xxi 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Public opinion stronger than law 138 
 
 Importance of Christian opinion ih. 
 
 Eeasons of its weakness hitherto ib. 
 
 3. Question of the necessity of a Church, or Churches 139 
 
 Definition of a Church ih. 
 
 Conflict of opinion among Christians on this question ih. 
 
 Appeal to the authority of Christ has a negative result 140 
 
 Paul the author of the conception of the Church as we know it . . %b. 
 
 The practical necessity %b. 
 
 The Creed in its simplest form is found in the Gospel ■. 141 
 
 Objection to more elaborate Creeds not altogether reasonable . . . 142 
 
 The origin and use of Creeds 143 
 
 4. Ceremony and ritual : 
 
 Necessary to give the senses their share in worship 144 
 
 And to bear witness to continuity and union ih. 
 
 The Sacrament of Holy Communion iJ. 
 
 True importance of uniformity in ceremonial 145 
 
 The Church as the guardian of the moral standard 146 
 
 Legal morality of the Jews not condemned by Christ ih. 
 
 Legal morality of the Christian code not exhausted or obsolete . . 147 
 
 LECTURE VII 
 
 Christianity a Kevolutionakt Fokce 
 
 The phrase sounds like paradox or platitude 151 
 
 But the fact is acknowledged : 
 
 (as) By the Pharisees and Sadducees 153 
 
 (6) By Jews in the Apostolic age 154 
 
 (c) Later, by the Boman government «&• 
 
 Constantine and the Church 155 
 
 Average Christianity a safeguard against enthusiasm 156 
 
 The immunity it gives not complete »J- 
 
 Spiritual revivals *°- 
 
 The world's way of dealing with them 157 
 
 Their failure apparent, not real 158 
 
xxii CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The lesson of them, faith in a hving Christ • 159 
 
 Christianity a revolution in character I'S. 
 
 3. Conversion: accepted by us as necessary for every one but ourselves 161 
 
 For the respectable as well as for the abject 162 
 
 Mediaeval Christianity 163 
 
 The real moral of it 164 
 
 Christianity in our own time ; 
 
 The Melanesian Mission 165 
 
 Christian work in East and South London 166 
 
 Christianity in our own class 167 
 
 Need of conversion for ourselves 168 
 
 4. A great religious movement now in progress 169 
 
 (a) Its intellectual aspect. 
 
 (5) Its social aspect. 
 
 (c) Its religious aspect. 
 
 To take our part in it we must be, or become, Christians .... »6. 
 
 Class distinctions : ignored by children 170 
 
 But persistent, and a serious obstacle 171 
 
 Probable effect of the reform of character on institutions difSoult to 
 
 forecast ib. 
 
 The Christian polity not to be confused with : 
 
 (a) A state of nature 172 
 
 (5) The social system now existing ih. 
 
 Nor with programmes of individualism or socialism ih. 
 
 The Christian state admits all sincere political ideals 173 
 
 Its spirit in sharp contrast with popular ideas of religion, as : 
 
 (o) A separate and intermittent activity ih. 
 
 (J) A means of evading deserved punishment ih. 
 
 Christianity revolutionizes the spirit which gives meaning and life to 
 
 institutions 174 
 
 LECTURE VIII 
 
 Some Pkactical Considerations 
 
 1. Betum to first question of the Lectures : 
 
 " Wherefore brought it forth wild grapes ? " 177 
 
 Weakness of Christian character 178 
 
CONTENTS xxiii 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The question whether the Church was meant to be universal; 
 
 answered in the affirmative 179 
 
 2. Conditions of reform on Christian lines : 
 
 (a) A Christian clergy 180 
 
 The special difficulties : 
 
 (i) Worship of organization 181 
 
 Ignorance of Bible and people 182 
 
 Establishment 183 
 
 (ii) Personal temptations 185 
 
 (6) A Christian laity 186 
 
 (i) To share the priesthood. 
 
 The ministry of worship and conversion. 
 
 (ii) To form, with the clergy, a Christian Church and nation 188 
 
 Danger of deputing religious duties 190 
 
 3. The purpose of the author in raising more questions than he can 
 
 answer : 
 
 (a) To elicit answers from wiser people 192 
 
 (6) To criticize inadequate attempts at solution ih. 
 
 Tyranny of economic laws can only be met by reform of character 193 
 
 This method appears tedious and unheroic ib. 
 
 But is the only effective method ib. 
 
 4. Christian public opinion has worked miracles 194 
 
 But has fallen short through timidity, selfishness, dissension ... ih. 
 
 The alternative is now clearly Christian or non-Christian .... ih. 
 
 It is the world against the disciples 195 
 
 Definition of a disciple ih. 
 
 The right attitude of Churchmen to Nonconformists ih. 
 
 What is a " sacrifice of principle " 196 
 
 Essential unity of all Christians 197 
 
 The other side of the dark picture ih. 
 
 A vision of the Church Catholic 198 
 
LECTUKE I 
 
 THE FACTS 
 
 " As a matter of fact lie who accepts either kind of Christianity 
 must accept hoth ; and, for my own part, if one could have one 
 without the other, I believe it to be an easier feat to accept the 
 dogma and refuse the ethics ; indeed, a proof of it is that this is 
 what the greater part of the world really does." — H. W. G-arrod. 
 
THE 
 REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL 
 
 LECTURE I 
 
 THE FACTS 
 
 "What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I 
 have not done in it ? Wherefore, when I looked that it should 
 bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes ? " — Isa. v. 4. 
 
 1. In the subject which I have chosen for these Lectures 
 — the question why the Kingdoms of this world have 
 not long ago become the Kingdom of our God and of 
 His Christ — the question why our Christianity does not 
 make us better men and women — I am fully conscious 
 that I am approaching a problem which may well 
 overtask all that I have of courage, sympathy, and 
 understanding. I may fairly be held guilty of pre- 
 sumption in putting forth in this place my thoughts 
 on so wide and deep a mystery. In some things I shall 
 have to say, I may seem to be judging wiser men than 
 myself — in some I fear I shall oflfend better men — yet 
 in conscience and honour I must go on. Constraint is 
 laid upon me : because I am convinced that in the right 
 answer to this question lies the key to all our religious 
 difficulties, and I see that its importance is obscured 
 
 B 2 
 
4 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. I. 
 
 by a cloud of controversy on minor details of doctrine 
 and ceremonial. Let me take, as an illustration of 
 what I mean, the Eeport of the Royal Commission on 
 Disorders in the Church of England, which was issued 
 last year. It was a most grave and reasonable docu- 
 ment, worthy of its distinguished authors. It was 
 eagerly awaited, and passionately criticized by men of 
 all parties. Yet one must say that it contained no 
 word bearing on anything that can properly be called 
 Religion. It dealt seriously and at length with mint, 
 and anise, and cummin ; and it dealt seriously with 
 them, because they are the things we care for. I admit 
 that the real interest of the Report lies deeper than 
 anything that is explicitly discussed in it. Doubtless 
 the real issue is whether the Church of England is to 
 go on in its present form ; an issue which must claim 
 the attention of every one of us, whether we desire or 
 fear to see that form changed. But Christianity is 
 wider and older than the Church of England ; and if 
 experience really shows that it has failed as a general 
 rule of life and conduct, the question arises whether its 
 precepts can be allowed to stand any longer, even 
 professedly, as the guiding principle of humanity. 
 
 The paradox of sin existing and continuing in the 
 believer, as a metaphysical problem, exercises and 
 troubles the mind of the Christian Philosopher. Nor 
 is it likely that a full and satisfactory solution will 
 soon be found. How can we reconcile those two 
 passages so near together in the First Epistle of 
 St. John, " If we say that we have no sin, we deceive 
 
Lect. I.] THE FACTS 5 
 
 ourselves," and " WJiosoever is born of God doth not 
 commit sin " ? ^ 
 
 I have not the learning or ability to propound any 
 solution of my own; but I ask your patience while I 
 try, with the greatest diffidence, to express thoughts 
 which seem to me to cast light on the apparent contra- 
 diction.^ I think we are justified by Scripture and 
 Reason in beKeving that by the Incarnation the Son of 
 God was made, not a man, but Man ; and that those 
 who are being saved become, in a mystical but not in 
 a figurative sense, members of the Christ ; and in the 
 measure of their identity with Him are — not immediately 
 freed — but enabled to free themselves from the power 
 of Sin. The process of Salvation is gradual, and, as 
 St. Paul testifies, is hindered by the impulses of the 
 lower nature struggling against the sanctified will. 
 Christ, for His part, has made Himself one with Man, 
 by virtue of absolute love and understanding ; but He 
 is not perfected until men, who are His members, by 
 full self-surrender are whoUy made one with Him. 
 
 The more obvious difiiculties of this position are, I 
 think, removed when we consider that succession in 
 Time is a condition of human thought, and has no 
 existence for the Eternal. Sub specie temporis the 
 Sacrifice was accomplished once for all in Palestine 
 nineteen hundred years ago. To God the Life and 
 Death are part of the Everlasting Now. 
 
 1 1 John i. 8 ; iii. 9. 
 
 ^ See Dr. Armitage Kobinson's edition of the Epistle to the 
 Ephesians, esp. pp. 42 foil. 
 
6 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. I. 
 
 Thus in some degree we can apprehend that it is 
 possible for us to fill up what is lacking in the suffer- 
 ings of the Christ ; and, alas, to contribute our share 
 to the burden of sin which He bears upon the Cross. 
 
 I fully recognize that this attempt at an explana- 
 tion must be open to criticism on many sides : at all 
 events it cannot be in any sense complete or final ; 
 but it seems to me, as far as it goes, to be a helpful 
 comment on a puzzling fact of human nature. 
 
 However, if the metaphysical problem were all, the 
 average untheoretical man might safely relegate it to 
 the study of the expert Theologian, and pass on his Way. 
 Unhappily it has an acutely practical bearing ; and it 
 is this practical aspect which I propose to treat in these 
 Lectures. I shall inquire first whether Christianity has 
 failed as we suppose, and then, what is the effect of this 
 apparent failure on the actual everyday thought and 
 action of the masses of the human race, for whom, as 
 we believe, Christ died. And the inquiry, though it 
 includes the occasional and repeated lapses of the devout 
 believer, will look chiefly at the much wider field of 
 the deliberate and systematic disregard of Christ's 
 moral teaching by professed Christians, and especially 
 by those who are not conscious of insincerity, or would 
 be very reluctant to admit, even to themselves, that they 
 are insincere or inconsistent. 
 
 2. It cannot, I think, be questioned that the striking 
 contrast between the lives of Christians and the rules 
 which they profess to accept is the great religious 
 difficulty of the present day. 
 
Lect. I] THE FACTS 7 
 
 We are told that whole classes of our fellow country- 
 men have drifted away from any kind of systematic 
 religion, and that the chief cause of this departure is the 
 impression that outward religious observances and the 
 acceptance of Creeds make no difference in action and 
 character ; that people who go to church are no better 
 than those who do not. 
 
 The workman observes that the Christian employer, 
 who in his private life is prominent in religious and 
 even philanthropic activities, is to him just as hard and 
 exacting a taskmaster as the man who professes no 
 belief ; and he is being taught also to observe that the 
 Church has for many years opposed every reform which 
 has benefited the mass of the population ; and looked 
 coldly on efforts outside legislation to improve the con- 
 dition of the labouring class, such as the Temperance 
 movement ; neglecting and thwarting them in their 
 earlier stages, and only patronizing and exploiting 
 them when they have established themselves without 
 its aid. 
 
 We know that this charge against Church and 
 Churchmen is not wholly true, but it is true enough to 
 be widely accepted, and very difficult to disprove ; and 
 the behef in its truth has incalculable influence in 
 driving men, not only from the Church, but from 
 Christianity. 
 
 I need not speak here of the poor man's objection to 
 the Churches as upper-class or middle-class societies, in 
 which he has no place and finds no welcome, because, 
 as I shall show, this point is not at present relevant to 
 
8 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. I. 
 
 my purpose. We may, as Christians, reasonably thank 
 God that we have been reawakened to the political, 
 social, and religious importance of what we call the 
 working classes, those who labour chiefly with their 
 hands. Not only because they constitute a great 
 majority of the nation, but also for the sake of Him 
 who was called the Carpenter's Son of Nazareth, we 
 do well to regard the failure of Christianity to reach 
 and hold the working classes as a reproach to Religion, 
 and a calamity to mankind. 
 
 But it is important to remember that it is not on the 
 working classes only that creed and worship are losing 
 their hold. With more educated men, doubtless, intel- 
 lectual difficulties and an impatience of what they 
 consider antiquated ceremonial, have weight. But they, 
 too, find a chief stumbling-block in the practical side, 
 the apparent ineffectiveness of orthodox belief to inspire 
 or control, and the impossibility of making their own 
 lives square with what they read in the Gospel, if they 
 are to hold their own in the struggle of professional or 
 business life. Many, unable to give up success which 
 can only be won by unchristian methods, have the 
 honesty to relinquish the outward forms of a Creed 
 which can have no expression in their actions ; others, 
 less scrupulous, still go to church from custom or 
 because it is respectable, but more or less consciously 
 divorce the Sunday from the week ; too willingly con- 
 vinced that maxims of conduct so commonly slighted 
 in the world, as they know it, cannot be applicable to 
 the affairs of daily life ; and, dearest loss of all, some 
 
Lect. I.] THE FACTS 9 
 
 of the best spirits, animae naturaliter Christianae, are 
 tempted to withdraw from a belief and a fellowship 
 which make such high claims as directors of human 
 life, and seem to them to effect so little. 
 
 3. At this point it is perhaps necessary for me to 
 state clearly that I do not for a moment underrate or 
 Avish to disparage the effect which Christianity has had 
 in the past and stUl has upon Society, and in a still 
 greater degree upon individuals. 
 
 It would indeed be idle and ungracious to deny 
 what Gibbon himself admits — the marvellous virtue of 
 Christianity to revive and awaken the human spirit 
 crushed under the weight of the dying civilization of 
 Imperial Rome. The old order was doomed. It was 
 the Church's office to console and strengthen obscure 
 sufferers in the change ; and to tame and humanize the 
 conquerors. Once more in the world's history the 
 captive took the rough victor prisoner, not this time 
 by superiority in art and literature only, but by the 
 irresistible force of a higher religious belief. 
 
 A picturesque instance of this humanizing power of 
 Christianity in our own country, and of the difference 
 between the heathen invader, and the same invader still 
 alien but now Christian, is noted by Professor Freeman 
 in his essay on Glastonbury, British and English : ^ 
 
 " We read," he says, " in the Chronicle thirteen 
 
 years before that fight at the Pens which made Avalon 
 
 English — ' Her Cenwealh waes gefuUod.' Here then the 
 
 Teutonic conqueror was one who had been himself 
 
 ' " English Towns and Districts," p. 83, 
 
lo THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. I. 
 
 washed, enlightened, made whole: in other words 
 baptized into the faith of Christ. Those whom he 
 conquered were his brethren. He came not therefore, 
 as Hengist and Aelle, simply to destroy. In other parts 
 of the West Saxon realm the coming of Cerdic and 
 Ceawlin had been as fearful as the coming of Hengist 
 and Aelle. But Avalon and the coasts thereof, the land 
 of the Sumorsaetan from the Axe westward, was the 
 prize of a conqueror who was Hengist and Aethelberht in 
 one. Under him the bounds of English conquest were 
 still enlarged ; but English conquest no longer meant 
 death or slavery to the conquered ; it no longer meant 
 the plunder and overthrow of the temples of the 
 Christian faith. The victor of Bradford and the Pens 
 had, before he marched forth to victory, done over 
 again what men fondly deemed to be the work of 
 Lucius ; he had timbered the old church at Winchester. 
 He was therefore ready to spare, to protect, to enrich, 
 to cherish as the choicest trophy of his conquest the 
 church which he found already timbered to his hand in 
 Ynysvitrin." 
 
 I believe that the Christian Church was the nursing 
 mother of Western civilization. And Christian principle 
 has been, to within the last few centuries, the determininor 
 factor of all social progress in Europe, even where the 
 clergy were not the ostensible leaders of the movement. 
 The Mediaeval Church was undoubtedly the most 
 democratic institution the world has ever known, and 
 gave such opportunities of power and dignity to low- 
 born talent as our modern democracies can hardly 
 
Lect. I.] THE FACTS ii 
 
 parallel. I need not speak in this place of the Church 
 as the guardian of Learning ; but it was the guardian, 
 too, of the gentler virtues, the virtues specially Christian. 
 It hallowed and exalted renunciation and self-control in 
 days when greed and passion were more unveiled, if 
 they were not stronger, than they are to-day. The 
 Christian element in chivalry gave it all that made it 
 respectable. 
 
 And even in later ages, apart from the great work 
 which has admittedly been done by the Churches, every 
 sound step in human improvement has been the direct 
 outcome of Christian principles. The Name of Jesus 
 might not be upon the banners of the advancing host, 
 sometimes, their leaders would have rejected it ; but if 
 He had not been, they could never have fought and 
 conquered, for it was He who first effectually taught 
 men that the weak and the poor are precious in God's 
 sight, and that the strong are made strong to serve 
 them. 
 
 And while we acknowledge all that Christianity has 
 done for the world, we need not go beyond our own 
 experience to see what it can do for individuals ; we 
 need not go to the great saints and martyrs to find 
 what we may prove by God's mercy in our own souls ; 
 what certainly is about us in this prosaic modern world, 
 lives changed, ennobled, strengthened, sanctified by the 
 Grace of God. There is no cause but this which will 
 account for the mystery of the weak character — and all 
 are weak — passing unscathed through the fire of tempta- 
 tion ; and the still greater mystery, when one who has 
 
12 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. I. 
 
 yielded to sin, and so diminished the power of resist- 
 ance, yet finds strength to take up the burden of a 
 ruined life, and turns to climb the stony path of 
 repentance and amendment. When we look thus upon 
 the holy and humble men of heart, and see their 
 courage, patience, and self-devotion ; when we see the 
 sinner's life amended, and his very character renewed, 
 we are stablished in the belief that a Name is given 
 among men whereby they may be saved ; our hearts 
 are uplifted to praise Him who grants such tokens of 
 His quickening power, a sign to them that believe and 
 to them that believe not. " Then shall they say among 
 the heathen, the Lord hath done great things for them. 
 Yea, the Lord hath done great things for us already, 
 whereof we rejoice." ^ 
 
 And then, in face of other and commoner ex- 
 periences of life, the mood of exaltation passes, giving 
 place to a melancholy wonder why the Power which 
 can do so much, does so little. We marvel at ourselves, 
 remembering how we have felt the love of Christ con- 
 straining us ; and have known the faith which is light 
 and power ; and looked on sin for a moment as alien 
 and hateful ; and within the week, within the day, we 
 have coldly reasoned ourselves back to the calculus of 
 self-interest ; or, with open eyes and easy heart, cheer- 
 fully acquiesced in the promptings of desire. And 
 more than by any act of sin we are appalled at the 
 dull, stagnant level of life in which we are content to 
 wander, incapable of aspiring to any height either of 
 ^ Ps. cxxvi. 3, 4. 
 
Lect. I.] THE FACTS 
 
 13 
 
 righteousness or of evil. We know that others have not 
 failed as we fail ; that in every age the Spirit of God 
 has had His perfect work in some elect souls ; such 
 work indeed as only makes it more inexplicable that 
 their lives have not exacted the imitation, as they have 
 commanded the love and reverence of mankind. 
 
 Again, if the harvest is scanty and partial, yet 
 surely the seed was good. The teaching of Christ 
 stands for us the crown and flower of human morality : 
 not a system outworn and left behind by the advance 
 of the Race. To us the Eule of His Words and 
 the Pattern of His Life are an ideal, most nearly 
 approached by the noblest and best of men, the goal 
 to which we believe mankind are still advancing 
 by slow and devious paths, when they might attain it 
 directly, if they could receive His teaching freely and 
 unreservedly. 
 
 And if the seed be good, what shall we say of the 
 Sower ? When we consider to what origin we Chris- 
 tians ascribe our religion, what answer can we give 
 when we are questioned on the history of its dealings 
 with mankind ? " God so loved the world that He 
 gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth 
 on Him should not perish, but have everlasting Life." ' 
 And man has contrived so to mishandle and misconstrue 
 Belief that the Faith of the Cross is to-day accounted 
 by thousands, in lands that have been Christian, a 
 thing foolish or mischievous ; by myriads more it is 
 quite removed from any control in the serious interests 
 1 John iii. 16. 
 
14 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. I. 
 
 of life, and even to its professed champions it stands 
 too often, not for the symbol and warrant of right 
 conduct, but for the intellectual assent to propositions 
 which are at best attempts to define the infinite. 
 
 When we look frankly at the present state of 
 Christianity from these three points — its alleged origin, 
 its actual merits as a rule of life, and its efiect upon 
 individuals, we are forced to confess that its influence 
 on mankind at large is, and has been, strangely dispro- 
 portionate alike to its high claims, and to the reasonable 
 expectation of those who saw its beginnings ; and if 
 we take more than a merely historical interest in that 
 disproportion, if we still believe that here and not 
 elsewhere lies the hope of the world, we cannot sit 
 content ; we are forced to seek, as far as we may, 
 causes and remedies. 
 
 4. It appears natural and convenient for the purposes 
 of this inquiry to divide the history of Christianity 
 into two periods : a long period in which no one 
 seriously denied the historical truth of Christianity and 
 its supreme ethical value, and a shorter period, bringing 
 us down to the present day, in which it is criticized, 
 timidly at first, loudly and confidently later, as being 
 ethically inadequate or pernicious. The first period seems 
 to last from the time when the conversion of Europe 
 was accomplished, at least to the middle of the sixteenth 
 century. Isolated instances of revolt can be found 
 early and at all times. But open blasphemers, like 
 our King William Eufus, were commonly men of such 
 frantic wickedness that they served rather to point a 
 
Lect. I.] THE FACTS 15 
 
 moral than to shake the faith of others. The first 
 stirrings of a more refined and thoughtful scepticism 
 were confined to the speculations of a few scholars, 
 and made little impression on the public mind. And 
 if here and there a Ralph Tremur was too outspoken, 
 he could still be schooled and chastened by the fatherly 
 discipline of a Grandison ; and the general feeling be 
 on the side of the bishop against the rash inquirer 
 into matters too high for him. 
 
 Age after age the nations of Europe rested in a 
 profound and unshaken belief that the historical and 
 doctrinal tenets of the Church were true and necessary 
 to salvation, and the belief carried its logical corollary 
 that those who denied or doubted those tenets were 
 enemies of the human race. The strength of this 
 conviction is shown by the history of the word 
 "miscreant" — the man who believes amiss is counted 
 capable of any crime ; it is shown in the attitude of 
 Christian Europe towards Mohammedans, and by the 
 popular feeling against the Jews, which found its 
 expression in the stories of William of Norwich and 
 little Saint Hugh of Lincoln ; stories which have their 
 exact parallels in Eastern Europe to-day. The massacre 
 of the Albigenses, with every circumstance of cruelty 
 and perfidy, was accepted by Civilization as an act of 
 righteous and salutary retribution. The powerful 
 Order of Templars fell unpitied under a charge of 
 celebrating profane rites. The severest treatment of 
 heretics was regarded as just and necessary ; and the 
 heretics suffered and died, not for opposing Christianity, 
 
i6 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. I. 
 
 but for clinging obstinately to their own conception 
 of it. 
 
 And this ixnquestioning faith did not confine itself 
 to the dogmatic side of the Church's teaching, in spite 
 of the perpetual and often dominant tendency to set 
 orthodoxy above morality. The primary importance of 
 right doing, though obscured by mechanical methods of 
 salvation, was faithfully preached by the clergy, and 
 was accepted by the sound instinct of the people. 
 When a greater Hugh of Lincoln pointed to the Last 
 Judgment in the Church at Fontevrault, and bade 
 trembling John mark the end of princes who do that 
 which is evil in the sight of the Lord, neither king nor 
 bishop was troubled by questionings as to the suffi- 
 ciency of the Gospel Eule to meet all cases. The pattern 
 of the Perfect Life given by Christ was acknowledged 
 by all men as absolute, however far their practice might 
 vary from the received standard. 
 
 We are naturally inclined to date the beginning of 
 the second period from the Eeformation ; and it is 
 certainly true that the religious break-up of the sixteenth 
 and seventeenth centuries gave an impulse to the intel- 
 lectual movement which ends in scepticism. But we 
 must acquit the Eeformers of any intention of freeing 
 thought in religious matters. Their purpose was 
 wholly to ascertain and enforce the essential truths 
 of Christianity; and by their readiness to persecute 
 they gave a melancholy proof of the sincerity of their 
 convictions. 
 
 In fact it is difficult to assign a definite date at 
 
Lect. L] the facts 17 
 
 which men began to criticize, not a particular Church 
 only, but Christianity as a whole ; for such criticism 
 finds its ground in causes which have been at work for 
 centuries. The same defect which made men resolve to 
 reform Christianity in the sixteenth century makes 
 them condemn or reject it in the twentieth ; and that 
 defect is its supposed ineffectiveness as a guide and 
 motive of conduct. The movement which led to the 
 break-away of Northern Europe from the Papacy did 
 not turn on the ninety-five theses which Luther nailed 
 on the church door at Wittenberg, but on the unsatis- 
 factory lives of priests and monks. The attitude of the 
 laity to the Churches to-day is not determined by 
 Higher Criticism or questions of Ceremonial (though 
 indifference is probably confirmed by the way we 
 manage these controversies), but by the unsatisfactory 
 lives of professing Christians. 
 
 Thus, on a closer view, we discover not two but 
 three stages, each passing gradually, but by a steady and 
 inevitable sequence of cause and effect, into the next. 
 In the first stage, the Church is conterminous with 
 Christianity, and the Christian Nation with its Church. 
 In the second stage, men have begun to doubt whether 
 a Society which appears to them to be guided in prac- 
 tice by principles widely divergent from its professed 
 teaching, can be the guardian and exponent of Divine 
 Truth. Their revolt takes the colour of theological 
 controversy, but in essence it is moral, not intellectual ; 
 the doctrines chosen for logical attack are found to be 
 those which are associated in the reformers' minds with 
 
 C 
 
i8 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. I. 
 
 scandal and oppression. They sought to frame a new 
 System of Belief and Worship more moral and more 
 reasonable, but tried to fence it about with the sanctions 
 of the Old. The third stage confronts us to-day. Not 
 only the Church, but Christianity itself, and all super- 
 natural religion, are called in question, or dismissed as 
 not worth calling in question. On one hand we have 
 a comparatively small force of active and articulate 
 hostility, which has its value as a stimulus to closer 
 thought and more energetic work. On the other we are 
 oppressed by the dead weight of spiritual inertia, a 
 widespread and profound indifference to dogma as the 
 guide and motive of action. 
 
 Yet some spirit is moving on the face of the waters. 
 There are signs abroad of portentous meaning, whether 
 they fill us with hope or despair — hope or despair, shame 
 or self-forgetting joy that in the dark hour of our 
 failure and unworthiness God is still wiser and stronger 
 than His unprofitable servants. For never was the 
 cause of Righteousness less a lost cause than it is to-day. 
 The dim stirrings of the human mind, cut off from 
 conscious communion with God, are yet guided by His 
 Hand. Side by side with apparent religious indifference 
 there grows a profound dissatisfaction with the social 
 order as it exists ; a dull uneasiness in the individual 
 soul, which can no longer find rest in material well-being, 
 nor consolation in the absence of it. A sick World is 
 crying aloud for an Evangel, but the Evangel is long 
 in coming. The soldiers of the Cause fight on in the 
 darkness, scattered and discouraged, clashing blindly 
 
Lect. I.] THE FACTS 19 
 
 in fratricidal strife, betrayed to death by the trappings 
 they have borrowed from the world and the devil : 
 
 telis 
 Nostrorum obruimur : oriturque miserrima oaedes 
 Arinorum facie, et Graiarum errors iubarum.^ 
 
 And because they have no flag, no watchword, no credo, 
 to unite them and to inspire them, the strong man 
 armed stUl keepeth his palace. But the step of One 
 stronger than he is even now at the door. Who shall 
 that stronger be ? Must we not ask, as the Baptist 
 asked of old, with heart searchings, that mistrust not 
 Him but ourselves, " Art Thou He that cometh, or look 
 we for another ? " 
 
 5. What is to be the spiritual force which shall teach 
 men the meaning of life, and eyolve harmony and order 
 from the mental and moral chaos in which mankind are 
 struggling ? 
 
 There are some earnest people who would have us 
 believe that the Gospel of Jesus of Nazareth has indeed 
 been a message of salvation in the past ; but now its 
 day is done, its power passed away for ever. They look 
 for the dawn of a new KeHgion which shall replace it, 
 as it replaced the outworn creeds of the ancient world. 
 They cry to us, " Lo, here is the Christ, or lo, there ; " 
 but we believe them not. We cannot tell what the 
 future may bring forth ; but certainly we do not find in 
 anything they offer us so far, the note of an authentic 
 revelation, nor in their methods any hope of it. We are 
 
 1 Virgil, Aeneid, II., 410. 
 
20 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect I. 
 
 sure, at least, that a World-faith can never spring from 
 the travailing of self-conscious intellect. And mean- 
 while, till the new Gospel shall have approved itself, we 
 cling, not unreasonably, to the old. It may be that we 
 have toiled all the night and taken nothing ; but in the 
 dawn we look for, we trust that we shall yet see our 
 Risen Lord upon the shore, and at His Word let down 
 our nets for a draught. 
 
 Next, within the Church itself men of leading and 
 authority urge that the best hope for the future lies in 
 the restatement of the Creeds in terms of modern 
 thought, that so the Christian Verities may regain their 
 appeal to the conscience through the understanding. 
 If this means that our conception of God must develop 
 with the mental and moral growth of each succeeding 
 generation, the process is not only desirable, but inevit- 
 able. But if it means an official recasting of dogma in 
 the language of the twentieth century, then such a 
 scheme might be summarily dismissed as impossible. 
 It would not be easy, with the utmost freedom of 
 choice, to select a body of men who would be at once 
 qualified and willing to handle so thorny a business ; 
 and one may fear that the deliberations of this ideal 
 synod would be assisted by a multitude of counsellors 
 in whom was not wisdom, and that all would end 
 in a cloud of new controversy, and confusion worse 
 confounded. 
 
 It may be true, though I think it is not, that the 
 theology of the fourth century is so deeply involved 
 in obsolete forms of thought and expression, that it 
 
Lect. I.] THE FACTS 21 
 
 has ceased to serve any useful purpose ; but surely 
 recent experience shows that it passes the wisdom of 
 man to devise, in these days, a symbol which would 
 command the assent of any one but its begetters. 
 And even if it were possible — granted that a new 
 Council could promulgate a new Creed received with 
 general satisfaction — it is scarcely to be desired. The 
 form the living truth takes to-day is still the paradox 
 or platitude of to-morrow ; and we should be in grave 
 danger of consecrating new formulas to bind and offend 
 the conscience of a not remote posterity. The weakness 
 of our present position does not lie in the inadequacy 
 of our definitions, but in the deadly fallacy of putting 
 definition first and character second, for it is written, 
 " If any man will do His Will, he shall know of the 
 doctrine whether it be of God." ^ The road to Truth 
 of Doctrine, which is the only guarantee for lasting 
 unity of Doctrine, lies through reform of conduct — a 
 journey infinitely slow, and in its early stages bitterly 
 distasteful. It has not the picturesque attraction of 
 great schemes for Corporate Eeunion, but they are 
 dreams — it is a reality. Now it is a hard saying, but 
 a wholesome one, that the great majority of mankind 
 have for centuries done everything with the Moral 
 Rule of the Gospel except obey it. They have read 
 it aloud in their churches and their homes ; they have 
 enshrined it in a magnificent system of worship ; they 
 have glossed and commented it, till it bears a suspicious 
 resemblance to the code which they find most profitable 
 * John vii. 17. 
 
2 2 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. I. 
 
 and convenient ; they have shaped and trimmed it to 
 fit into a corner of an otherwise pagan existence. 
 
 But we must try once more to receive it in its 
 entirety and simplicity ; we must clear our minds of 
 the conventions which dispense us from its obligations, 
 and the exegesis which dilutes its meaning. We must 
 go behind the mediaeval Church, behind the First Six 
 Centuries, the Saints, the Fathers, even behind Saint 
 Paul, and seek our inspiration once more where he 
 sought it, in the Master Himself. - I believe the secret 
 lies in absolute unqualified obedience to Christ's plain 
 teaching as He spoke it. That teaching, as we find it 
 in the Gospels, is a small body of positive precept ; it 
 seems to me perfectly clear in meaning, and almost 
 wholly ethical, laying stress on character and on conduct 
 as the necessary test of character. "Except ye be 
 converted, and become as little children, ye shall in no 
 wise enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. By their 
 fruits ye shall know them : do men gather grapes of 
 thorns, or figs of thistles ? " ^ To many of us so simple 
 and difficult a Eule seems too little to satisfy the 
 religious instinct. To others it seems too much for 
 human weakness — a counsel of perfection. Writers, 
 whose first interest is the moral improvement of the 
 Eace, declare that the morality of Jesus was meant 
 for a little Jewish sect withdrawn from the world ; it 
 was never intended, and is not fitted to guide men 
 in great affairs and complicated societies. And they 
 have reason, but not so much as they think they have. 
 ^ Matt, xviii. 3; vii. 16. 
 
Lect. I.] THE FACTS 23 
 
 It is quite true that His teaching is strangely at variance 
 with the accepted standards and ways of life which we 
 find in modern civilizations, and indeed in any civiliza- 
 tion since the world first officially patronized Christianity 
 in the reign of Constantine. But it is not on that 
 account to be dismissed as impracticable. Eather, 
 when we consider the pass to which the said ways 
 and standards have brought us, this very antagonism 
 commends it, inspiring a hope that an uncompromising 
 application of it might produce results widely divergent 
 from those which we deplore while we despair of 
 mending them. 
 
 For me, then, and for those who have been my 
 teachers, the hope of Salvation is not to be found in 
 the possibilities of a new Eeligion which shall one day 
 rise on the ruins of Christianity ; nor, be it spoken 
 with all respect, can it depend chiefly on the methods 
 of a more enlightened Theology ; though men who are 
 seekers after Truth can never rate too highly the debt 
 they owe to brave and patient workers in the fields of 
 History and Philosophic speculation. For us the one 
 thing needful is for mankind to recover the Rule of 
 Life as Christ taught it, and to follow it, at whatever 
 sacrifice ; for we are convinced that if the answer to 
 our perplexities, the remedy of our sorrow and sinfulness, 
 be not in Him, then there is no remedy, no answer. 
 " Lord to whom shall we go ? Thou hast the words of 
 Eternal Life." 
 
LECTURE II 
 
 THE HISTOEIC BASIS OF CHEISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 " The furnace has certainly been heated seven times over, and 
 yet this group of facts, the common matter of the Synoptic 
 Gospels, remains substantially unscathed. Doubts may be raised, 
 but they will never permanently hold their ground. We have 
 then, I cannot but think, in the criticism of these men an irreducible 
 niinimum. And that minimum, I must needs think, is an Archi- 
 medean point ; grant us so much, and we shall recover what ought 
 to be recovered in time." — Sandat. 
 
LECTURE II 
 
 THE HISTORIC BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 " Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to draw up a 
 narrative concerning those matters which have been fulfilled 
 among us, even as they delivered them unto us, which from the 
 beginning were eye-witnesses and ministers of the Word : it 
 seemed good to me also, having traced the course of all things 
 accurately from the first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent 
 Theophilus, that thou mightest know the certainty concerning 
 the things wherein thou wast instructed." — Luke i. 1-4. 
 
 1. The preface to the Third Gospel is rightly valued 
 by New Testament students as recording frankly the 
 writer's own view of the method and purpose of his 
 work. These verses clear the ground for relevant 
 criticism, by enabling us to dismiss various theories of 
 the genesis of the Synoptic Gospels. 
 
 It is not till we understand what the Evangelist 
 meant to do, and how he set about doing it, that we 
 can usefully begin to judge whether he has attained his 
 object, and really given us the certainty he promised. 
 It was the purpose of the writer to ascertain by inquiry 
 and comparison what Jesus of Nazareth actually did and 
 said when He was on earth ; it is the purpose of New 
 Testament criticism to ascertain how far he succeeded 
 by those methods in giving a trustworthy picture of the 
 
28 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. II. 
 
 events, and more especially of tlie Person, whom he 
 professes to describe ; and to disentangle the genuine 
 event, the authentic discourse, from the accretions of 
 myth, or the glosses of theological tendency. 
 
 In the last century theologians and scholars were 
 chiefly concerned with discovering what residuum of 
 undoubted truth the documents would yield under the 
 severe tests of impartial criticism ; and all schools of 
 thought were practically agreed that the great issue 
 depended on maintaining or discrediting the historical 
 accuracy of the received account. 
 
 But to-day we are obliged to consider a previous 
 question before we estimate the results of their long 
 conflict, or even admit its importance. Time brings in 
 its revenges, and by a strange irony it seems as if textual 
 criticism and historical research, in their bearing on the 
 problem of Religion, were in some danger of being 
 relegated to the same limbo of futilities to which their 
 exponents have long consigned the patient labours of 
 the Schoolmen. If it can be seriously maintained that 
 the objective occurrence of the events of the Gospel 
 History is not a necessary condition of Christian Belief 
 or Christian Morality, it is the refinement of pedantry 
 to be disputing over dates and sources. The common 
 sense of our forefathers would no doubt have rejected 
 such a proposition as a mischievous paradox ; but to us 
 the idea once suggested is not so easily disposed of, 
 " for it is not so easy," as one of our most learned 
 divines tells us, " to show how an event, or a series of 
 events, in the past can afiect the truth of a religion. 
 
Lect.II.] historic basis of christian belief 29 
 
 Either these events, to which so momentous an impor- 
 tance is attributed, form part of the regular series of 
 occurrences in time, or they do not. If they do, they 
 are only particular manifestations of laws which are 
 always in operation, and which vindicate themselves 
 continually in human experience ; except to the historian, 
 it is not of much importance whether this or that par- 
 ticular occurrence has been accurately transmitted or 
 not. ... If, on the other hand, an event is purely 
 miraculous and outside the regular series of cause 
 and effect, its importance is in the inverse ratio to its 
 strangeness." ^ 
 
 Such a separation between historical fact and reli- 
 gious belief wiU appear at first sight to the ordinary 
 mind both difficult and dangerous ; yet it has been 
 adopted by writers of very different schools of thought 
 as a solution of the difficulty which the results of Biblical 
 criticism seem to involve. Every one is familiar now 
 with the Abbe Loisy's brilliant attempt, by means of the 
 doctrine of development, to combine an extreme critical 
 treatment of documents with an ex anivio acceptance of 
 the whole cycle of Roman Catholic dogma ; and Dr. Inge, 
 in the essay from which I have just quoted, makes it 
 clear that the attitude towards the historical side of 
 Christianity taken up by Loisy, and, in a way more 
 intelligible to me, by Father Tyrrell, in his book, " Lex 
 Orandi," and its sequel, " Lex Credendi," diff^s little 
 from that of the liberal Protestant followers of Ritschl, 
 who by their theory of Value Judgments make spiritual 
 1 Dr. W. E. Inge, " Truth and Falsehood in Eeligion," p. 91. 
 
30 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. II. 
 
 need, and not harmony with objective fact, the criterion 
 of religious truth in a doctrine. Dr. Inge goes on to 
 criticize this attempt to escape from a difficult position 
 by lifting the whole subject above the verdict of history. 
 He points out that it fails on its own ground, being 
 psychologically inadequate to satisfy the religious 
 instincts of those who really believe the supernatural 
 occurrences alleged ; while for those who already accept 
 them merely as symbols, it is superfluous. The simple 
 believer, alarmed by the frank dealings of the critics 
 with what he has been taught to consider the Word of 
 God, is at first attracted by a line of argument which 
 seems to "put the Ark of God somewhere where the 
 Philistines cannot get at it ; " but as soon as he under- 
 stands whither the seeming easy path is leading him, 
 he turns back startled and dismayed, and perhaps not 
 destined to find again the old guides he has deserted. 
 
 I think it is necessary to insist on this practical 
 danger ; for to propound views of Truth which are sure 
 to puzzle and ofiiend simple minds, is to lay a stumbling- 
 block in the very gate of salvation. 
 
 A Gospel which depends upon fine distinctions is 
 no Gospel to preach. And it is no answer to say that 
 the same Truths may be presented in one form to the 
 uneducated, whUe they are held in another form by 
 the wise. Certainly religion can never be quite the 
 same thing to the learned and to the ignorant. But 
 the day of an esoteric doctrine, opposed on such a 
 vital point to popular conceptions, is past, if it ever 
 existed; a lively interest and curiosity about religious 
 
Lect. II.] HISTORIC BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 31 
 
 subjects is so widespread, if thinly spread, in our time, 
 that Reserve has become impossible. And if it were 
 possible, the fact remains that the preacher, to be 
 effective, must believe sincerely in his message. We 
 may no doubt rightly welcome the pragmatist doctrine 
 as a scientific statement and explanation of certain 
 phenomena of the religious consciousness. It is valuable 
 as denouncing the fiction of pure reason apart from 
 will and emotion, and rejecting its long-standing claim 
 to be the sole guide of life and instrument of belief. 
 It is very valuable in its insistence on right action as 
 the proof of right belief, in its not unneeded reminder 
 that, " All our postulates must stand the test of practical 
 working before their claim to truth can be admitted. 
 Whatever our faith, it must be confirmed by works, 
 and so prove itself to be objectively valid." ^ 
 
 It is of course plain, from what I have said in my 
 first Lecture, that practical teaching of this kind must 
 have my fuU and unfeigned assent. But I venture 
 to suggest that the pragmatist is false to his own canon, 
 and is falling again under the dominion of pure reason, 
 when he carries his principle to its extreme logical 
 conclusion, and offers us the conduct-value of a belief, 
 not as a note of historic truth, but as a substitute for 
 objective fact. The centre and essence of Christianity 
 lies in the Person of Jesus Christ, and I believe that 
 to nine-tenths of the human race it would be idle to 
 offer what the philosopher may call an ideal, but the 
 
 1 r. C. S. SohiUer, "Faith, Reason, and Religion." — Hihhert 
 Juwnal for January, 1906. 
 
32 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. II. 
 
 plain man would call an imaginary Person. The 
 writers whose views we have been discussing virtually 
 attempt to show that if the Gospels should be proved 
 a myth, it would make no difference to Christianity. 
 I am not of their opinion. I trust that we should be 
 able to face such a disaster with courage and sincerity. 
 I do not suggest that the belief in God and Eight 
 would perish from among men ; but I do maintain 
 that it would be a stupendous check to the spiritual 
 and moral progress of the human race : the loss of 
 the most illuminating revelation of God, the most 
 powerful motive that the world has ever known. 
 
 2. So far I have spoken of intellectual movements 
 which are conservative in their apparent radicalism, 
 having for their professed purpose an attempt to 
 preserve the effective belief in Christ by fitting it to 
 the conditions of modern thought. It is clear that 
 whatever objections apply to purely subjective con- 
 ceptions of Religion, will in our view apply still more 
 strongly to ethical systems which ignore altogether the 
 religious sanction, finding an adequate explanation of 
 the moral sense in a natural evolution determined by 
 natural motives of selfishness. 
 
 Many who accept this account of the genesis of 
 morality regard the teaching of Christ as a real but 
 quite normal step in the evolution of moral ideas, while 
 others condemn it as retrograde, and as obscuring <the 
 real issues by the introduction of false motives and 
 irrelevant sanctions. But to all alike it is but a 
 movement or an eddy, like others, in the natural 
 
Lect.IL] historic basis of christian belief 33 
 
 stream of progress. It is here that the Christian is 
 in conflict with the secular moralists. First, he sees 
 in the natural selfish impulse the bar to moral progress, 
 and cannot admit that what he finds the chief hindrance 
 to right conduct in his own life, and in the world about 
 him, can also be the source and origin of the rules it 
 contravenes. Second, the Christian is convinced that 
 in Christ we have a real and unique moral revelation. 
 I am not concerned to deny that much of the morality 
 of the Gospels exists, or may be conceived to exist, 
 independent of its historical setting : that much of it 
 is actually to be found elsewhere. And by this I do 
 not merely mean that many of our Lord's recorded 
 sayings can be closely paralleled from the best Jewish 
 Literature of a time before His Birbh. I mean to admit 
 frankly that a measure of His Spirit, which is not 
 always discernible in His professed followers, may be 
 found in Greek and Oriental Eeligions and Philosophies. 
 Probably its most notable manifestations are in the 
 precepts of the purer Buddhism, and the teaching and 
 character of the Platonic Socrates. It is not surprising 
 that Christian writers have credited Plato with direct 
 divine inspiration, nor would it be easy to find a 
 reasonable theory of inspiration on which we can call 
 them wrong. It is not merely in the great passages 
 which centre round the death of Socrates that we are 
 constantly moved by resemblances of thought and even 
 of word to the Gospel story ; everywhere we find 
 anticipations of ideas and principles which we have 
 too easily accustomed ourselves to regard as exclusively 
 
34 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. II. 
 
 Christian. Without going beyond the limits of that 
 portion of one book^ with which my work in Oxford 
 has made me more familiar, we have the picture of 
 the non-aggressive state, in how many things the type 
 in large of what we expect in the Christian man. We 
 have the important distinction between the exercise 
 of an art with a view to gain, and its exercise for its 
 own sake, which in the light of Plato's conception of 
 Virtue as the Art of Life, is a much-needed warning 
 of the true basis of moral action. And, not to multiply 
 instances, the whole character of the ^vXa/ces, with their 
 great powers and privileges to be used solely for the 
 good of the whole Society and of the weaker and less 
 wise brethren, is profoundly Christian, and recalls to 
 us sharply what should be the character of disciples 
 of One who came not to be ministered unto but to 
 minister. 
 
 We shall not deny to Plato, nor to Sakya Mouni, a 
 portion of the Divine Spirit. We believe, in a wider 
 sense than the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, 
 that God of old spake to our fathers 7roXu/te/)&Js koX 
 TToXvTpoTrcos, by divers portions, and in divers manners ; 
 but we believe also that He hath spoken to us in His 
 Son. Great as has been the influence of Platonism 
 on human thought, its influence on human life has not 
 been great, nor always good. His mysticism carries 
 him out of touch with the rough and ready dealings of 
 human life, and was quickly superseded by the positive 
 philosophy of Aristotle, with its ideal of the prosperous 
 ' Plato, Republic, I.-IV. 
 
Lect. II.] HISTORIC BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 35 
 
 pagan gentleman, so curiously resembling the type 
 which we accept with satisfaction in a world which is 
 again, or still, pagan. 
 
 But it may be urged that if Plato failed to commend 
 a gospel of self-renunciation and self-discipline to a 
 selfish generation, Buddha at least commended it, to 
 a degree, and with a practical eflfect, which Christianity 
 cannot rival. This is true ; and yet I venture to main- 
 tain that when we have given all credit possible to 
 non- Christian systems of ethic, it remains that Jesus 
 Christ revealed two new things — a new character and 
 a new religion. The character He revealed is new 
 in this : that Christian unselfishness has a quality 
 quite distinct from the Buddhist self - renunciation, 
 which is, in a sense, purely selfish in its spirit and 
 aims. The Buddhist wants to be rid of his indivi- 
 duality as an obstacle to the higher life. Nirvana ; and 
 for this end he is ready to sacrifice his fellow-men, 
 in so far as he deprives them of his services and com- 
 panionship. The Christian's Self is profoundly interest- 
 ing and infinitely precious to him because he is a 
 Member of Christ, a necessary atom in the com- 
 pleteness of the divine Cosmos, a note in the divine 
 
 harmony — 
 
 " His voice seems weak ; it drops : 
 Creation's chorus stops." 
 
 The perfected Christian cannot strictly be said to sacrifice 
 his interests to others or to the community — that belongs 
 to the period of conflict and imperfection — but he makes 
 their interest his ; he finds self-realization in identifying 
 
o 
 
 6 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. II. 
 
 himself with his brethren, and sets on their personalities 
 the same value and interest as on his own, for the same 
 reason. And this spirit of universalism, which makes 
 men truly brethren, makes them also Sons of Grod ; it 
 is the spirit of adoption whereby we cry, "Abba, 
 Father." 
 
 This new character, founded on the conviction of the 
 infinite value of each human soul to itself, to God, and 
 to all other human souls, makes of Christianity a new 
 Eeligion. All the other Religions the world has known 
 are either exclusive or non-moral, and most of them 
 have both defects. For the Israelite, Jehovah had 
 indeed become in the course of ages, not only one God, 
 but the One God, supreme and alone in the Universe ; 
 but His favour belonged only to those who were children 
 of Abraham by blood or adoption. The life of the 
 Gentile nations was shadowed by the presence of their 
 Gods, and made up of religious observances ; but their 
 religion of daily life was non-moral ; its moral aspect 
 was reserved for the few — for persons of intellectual 
 culture and leisure, or in some way separated from the 
 kindly race of men. The Eeligion which Christ teaches 
 has neither limitation ; its scope not only may, but 
 must, include all human beings either as subject or 
 object. Its morality is not a " cloistered virtue." We 
 read, as last and chiefest of the signs which were to 
 confirm the troubled faith of the Baptist, that " the 
 poor have the gospel preached unto them." Poverty in 
 this place means surely, not only the lack of pence, but 
 the lack of leisure, the supposed ignorance of higher 
 
Lect.IL] historic basis of christian belief 37 
 
 things, which is the portion of all who are occupied in 
 carrying on the world's work, whose lot is cast in the 
 busy fields, and not in the quiet garden of the Lord. 
 
 3. Having thus expressed to the best of my power 
 what I conceive to be the distinctive character of the 
 Christian ethic, I propose to compare it with two 
 systems which deal — the one empirically, the other 
 after a more scientific method — with the alleged facts 
 of human nature apart from God. 
 
 The first I will call the ethic of expediency, the real 
 Contrat Social; the give and take which makes it 
 possible for men to combine and live in societies, and 
 is frankly based on self-interest. I will borrow from 
 the " Eepublic " a description of its origin, which is also 
 a criticism of its defects. 
 
 " To commit injustice is, they say, in its nature 
 a good thing, and to sufier it an evil thing ; but the 
 evil of the latter exceeds the good of the former ; and 
 so, after the twofold experience of both doing and 
 sufi"ering injustice, those who cannot avoid the latter 
 and compass the former find it expedient to make a 
 compact of mutual abstinence from injustice. Hence 
 arose legislation and contracts between man and man, 
 and hence it became the custom to call that which the 
 law enjoined just as well as lawful. Such, they tell us, 
 is justice, and so it came into being ; and it stands 
 midway between that which is best, to commit injustice 
 with impunity, and that which is worst, to sufier 
 injustice without any power of retaliating. And being 
 a mean between these two extremes, the principle of 
 
38 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. II. 
 
 justice is regarded with, satisfaction, not as a positive 
 good, but because the inability to commit injustice has 
 rendered it valuable ; for they say that one who had it 
 in his power to be unjust, and who deserved tte name 
 of a man, would never be so weak as to contract with 
 any one that both the parties should abstain from 
 injustice." ^ 
 
 This, we must admit, is not really an unfair state- 
 ment of the principle on which a large proportion of 
 men have always acted in government and business ; 
 and we may further admit that within strict limits it 
 has been partially successful ; it does enable men, 
 though with infinite dissatisfaction and friction, to live 
 together in societies. But it is obvious that for the 
 real work of Ethic, the formation of character, it has 
 little value ; and that indirect, and based on a mis- 
 conception of its true nature. Since its real sanction is 
 simply a balance of advantage, it will break down 
 wherever the advantage appears to be on the other side — 
 that is, in every case of strong temptation. In a certain 
 proportion of cases these revolts will be successful ; and 
 the rebel having first defied the law, will next proceed 
 to remould it to the advantage of himself or his class, 
 and to the detriment of those who are not strong 
 enough to resist. Thus, as Thrasymachus brutally but 
 quite truly maintains, the ethic of expediency works 
 out as the interest of the stronger. The breaker of the 
 old contract is in a position to dictate the new, and 
 
 ' Plato, Eepublic, 358, 359, Davies' and Vaughan's trans- 
 lation. 
 
Lect. II.] HISTORIC BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 39 
 
 assumes a virtue in observing the terms of injustice 
 which he has formulated. " The kings of the Gentiles 
 exercise lordship over them, and they that exercise 
 authority are called benefactors." 
 
 But the position of the encroacher is still insecure, 
 so long as it is protected by no stronger defences than 
 he has broken through to attain it ; and therefore iwe 
 see in the next stage, Power founded on no other claim 
 than the strong hand, seeking to hedge itself about with 
 transcendental sanctions, divine right of kings, and the 
 like ; thus confessing that the ethic of expediency has 
 in itself no obligation to bind the wiU and the con- 
 science. But in fact it found little difficulty in impos- 
 ing such sanctions. The human mind, with its innate 
 reverence for law and custom, eagerly accepts the claim 
 of an immemorial and sacred origin for institutions 
 which date back beyond the memory of its own gene- 
 ration. When Shakespeare puts it into the mouth of 
 the vile Claudius, the usurper of his murdered brother's 
 throne, the words — 
 
 " There's suoli divirity doth hedge a king 
 That treason can but peep to what it would," 
 
 he does not write only in tragic irony. His genius 
 touches a deep-rooted instinct, which makes men pay a 
 superstitious respect to power and success in the most 
 unworthy. 
 
 The word "divinity" recalls to us the Zeus-born 
 princes of the Iliad, but it has another and more 
 sinister significance. It reminds us that the Church 
 has long been too easOy inclined to ally itself with the 
 
40 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. II. 
 
 powers that be, as such ; it has given to secular govern- 
 ments not only the obedience that was due to them in 
 their proper sphere, but sanction and support in doubtful 
 or more than doubtful acts ; it has allowed the spiritual 
 authority to be invoked for the maintenance of estab- 
 lished abuses and the justification of class divisions. 
 In the past the Church has had its reward, such as it 
 was, for these unworthy capitulations with the Spirit of 
 the World ; and to-day Christianity is paying the 
 price of them, and stands half paralyzed in the face of 
 a great opportunity. Men are beginning to find the 
 existing social order intolerable, and seek something 
 better than the haphazard rules of conduct which have 
 allowed it to come into being. They are weary and 
 heavy laden, but they will not come to Christ to be 
 refreshed, because in His Name burdens grievous to 
 be borne have been laid upon their shoulders. They 
 declare that the Churches have made the word of God 
 of none effect for them by their tradition ; and it is 
 useless to meet this complaint with indifference or angry 
 denial. We cannot blind ourselves to the fact that 
 oflicial Christianity, instead of taking its place as the 
 natural leader of the new Reformation, is in danger of 
 falling with the old Order which it has tried so hard 
 to prop, and we cannot blind ourselves to the cause. 
 Just so far as the Church has been a steward of 
 unrighteousness, it is called upon to give an account of 
 its stewardship, and is suffered to be no longer steward. 
 The real ethic of the Gospel is discredited by the 
 practical ethic of those who have prophesied in its 
 
Lect. II.] HISTORIC BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 4I 
 
 name ; and men who are earnest for righteousness 
 are repelled from it, and driven back upon an ethic of 
 selfishness, a selfishness wider and more enlightened, 
 the modern scientific ethic, for which its advocates 
 claim all that is best in Christianity, unburdened with 
 dogma and tradition. Whether such a claim can be 
 justified time and experience alone can prove ; but I 
 may at least point out what seem to me fatal defects 
 in such a system, regarded as a general rule of life 
 and conduct. First, it depends on purely intellectual 
 motive ; and omits, and even renounces, the emotional 
 appeal which alone can move the mass of men to give 
 up what is immediately pleasant, for the sake of a 
 remote and higher good. An ethic whose cogency 
 admittedly rests on a wide outlook, and something of 
 a scientific habit of mind, is not likely either to 
 attract or compel any large proportion of men and 
 women, as we know them. Yet on this weak and 
 untried sanction it founds the tremendous demand that 
 we shall barter some of the pleasure and profit of our 
 little span of life to secure improved material conditions 
 for the Race in a problematic future ; and this heroic 
 venture of faith is asked, not from the strong, unreason- 
 ing impulse of self-sacrifice, but from the calcula- 
 tions of self-interest, which, however enlightened, has 
 always proved hitherto a weakening and disintegrating 
 force. 
 
 4. Let us, however, return to examine in detail the 
 claim to retain all that is best in Christianity, without 
 dogma — a prospect so attractive to many who value the 
 
42 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. II. 
 
 ethical side of Christ's teaching, but are troubled by 
 intellectual difficulties, or offended by ecclesiastical 
 assumptions. The claim is, as I have said, so far 
 untested by experience ; for it cannot well be doubted 
 that great part of the best morality of to-day is an 
 inheritance, acknowledged or unacknowledged, from 
 Christianity. But we may judge whether tendencies 
 of the New Morality already ascertainable give promise 
 of preserving all that we most value in the old. First, 
 we shall observe, if I am not wrong, that a certain 
 class of virtues which we have been accustomed to 
 consider characteristic, Humility, Meekness, Long- 
 suffering, are destined to disappear as not making for 
 efficiency. But another and more fundamental opposi- 
 tion is found in the fact that the aims and the methods 
 of the new teaching are primarily material. " Seek 
 ye first the Kingdom of God," our Lord says, " and 
 His righteousness, and all these things shall be added 
 unto you." The secular Gospel begins at the other end. 
 It begins with the material environment, and is much 
 concerned with economics and hygiene, both of them 
 sciences which claim the right to disregard and even 
 to eliminate the Individual in the interest of the Eace. 
 Thus scientific evangelists are at once in conflict with 
 the fundamental doctrine of Christianity, the equal 
 and infinite value of every human soul. They are 
 themselves not unaware of the contradiction, and 
 actually criticize Christianity on this ground, accusing 
 its supporters of short-sighted and sentimental humani- 
 tarianism, opposed to the true interests of the Eace, 
 
Lect.IL] historic basis of christian belief 43 
 
 as indeed it would be, if we exclude religious belief 
 from our hj^othesis. 
 
 Meanwhile the general conscience forbids in practice 
 the realization of any new schemes for promoting 
 human advance on these lines, though it supinely 
 allows the application of the principle in forms to which 
 it has grown too well accustomed to be shocked by 
 them. And indeed a better safeguard is found as yet 
 in the fact that science is still nobly false to the logic 
 of its own position. Let me take a striking instance. 
 The true purpose of medical science is the physical 
 perfection of the Eace, and the shortest way to that 
 end is not the nursing but the speedy removal of the 
 diseased individual. The logical conclusion is plain : 
 the principle is rigid and merciless. But in practice 
 I do not hesitate to say that the healing art is the one 
 sound and undoubted manifestatioD of Christ's spirit 
 on a large scale now extant in the world. But it is 
 the triumph of character over consistency. If we 
 dethrone Christ to deify Science, must we not look 
 with trembling for the day when Consistency will 
 claim her own ? 
 
 5. I have given perhaps too much time to argu- 
 ments which are after all likely to win the assent only 
 of those who are already inclined to be convinced ; and 
 left myself too little for considering the question which 
 lies at the root of the whole problem. If it be granted 
 that belief in a historical Christ is a necessary condition 
 of the highest morality for the mass of mankind, how 
 far are we justified in assuming that it is true ? An 
 
44 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. II. 
 
 exhaustive survey of the Historic Basis of the Christian 
 Faith would be as much beyond the limits of a lecture 
 as it is certainly beyond my powers. But I am 
 encouraged to offer some considerations by the thought 
 that, while the data and methods of research belong to 
 the expert, the ultimate tribunal on a question of such 
 intensely practical bearing must be average educated 
 opinion, for which I may consider myself in some 
 measure qualified to speak. 
 
 We must distinguish, I think, a first period in 
 which criticism, chiefly literary, was avowedly hostile, 
 and was met by a like animus for defending all that 
 appeared to be threatened, without considering enough 
 whether it was essential or defensible. The results for 
 a time seemed to be ruinous to the orthodox position. 
 The critics professed to have brought down the Books 
 which compose the New Testament to a date which 
 robbed them of all credit as historical documents ; and 
 the apologists, by maintaining obstinately much that 
 was in fact untenable, weakened the cause they were 
 trying to serve. It is very important to observe that 
 much of the popular opinion, in England at least, 
 which interests itself in these matters, is still at this 
 stage. It is hard for us in Oxford to realize how many 
 people still believe that the question at issue is whether 
 the New Testament is verbally inspired and infallible, 
 or simply untrue. Meanwhile for scholars the period 
 of purely literary criticism is at least provisionally 
 closed. An impartial application of critical methods 
 has resulted in a return from the extreme negative 
 
Lect. II.] HISTORIC BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 45 
 
 position ; and the general verdict of those who have 
 a right to speak is that the Books of the New Testa- 
 ment are substantially what they profess to be : not 
 what intemperate advocates of either party would 
 represent them to be. We may justly say that the 
 net result of treating the Bible as any other book has 
 been a great gain for those who value and believe in 
 Christianity. But we must be careful neither to over- 
 estimate that gain, nor to mistake its character. It 
 furnishes no excuse for a return to the old a priori 
 apologetic. The main Synoptic Narrative, the Acts of 
 the Apostles, and, with some reservations, the Pauline 
 Epistles and St. John, are apparently secure; a 
 positive result which might have seemed beyond hope 
 not many years ago ; but at the same time we are 
 made painfully conscious that two great Articles of 
 the Apostles' Creed are left at best open questions by 
 purely literary criticism. And, on the other hand, a 
 chief gain of a century of free study and discussion is 
 that we can never go back to the old way of looking 
 at the New Testament as a single book of uniform 
 value and authenticity. It was an unquestioned 
 Authority. It is, I venture to think, a higher thing, 
 a source of knowledge which must be questioned relent- 
 lessly, if we are to discover its treasures. The accept- 
 ance of the documents as authentic and sincere has 
 supplied the subject-matter for a sympathetic but 
 uncompromising historical criticism, which has helped 
 us to understand the origin of Christianity, by giving 
 a human and living interest to events and actors that 
 
46 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. II. 
 
 an exaggerated reverence tended to make abstract and 
 impersonal ; and so in turn it leads up to what Dr. 
 Sanday ^ calls ultimate problems, to the great question of 
 all, " What think ye of Christ ? " It is not a question 
 that can be answered offhand, or by a mere appeal to 
 the results of literary and historical criticism. Lest we 
 should be tempted to conclude at once that our answer 
 is inevitable, it is wholesome and instructive to consider 
 a very different view of the same data ; and to ask 
 ourselves why we are not content to stop where it stops. 
 The theology of the Germans has always been 
 notable for sincerity and profound learning ; but the 
 exponents of its latest phase claim our most serious 
 attention by tendencies which are both new and 
 striking : first, they have abandoned the technicalities 
 of the study and made a vigorous and effective appeal 
 to popular thought ; and second, they agree in finding, 
 in that part of the Gospel narrative which they accept, 
 something which cannot be judged by ordinary 
 standards ; and yet, while their treatment of our Lord 
 is entirely reverent, they steadily set aside the question 
 of His Divinity, not so much denying as ignoring it. 
 They set before us an historical Jesus of Nazareth : 
 unique in moral insight and purpose, unique also in the 
 character which is revealed by His life and by His 
 death : who believed that He was the Messiah, and 
 believed also that He was the Son of God in a sense, 
 and with a fulness, that the best of other men may 
 not venture to claim. 
 
 1 " Outlines of the Life of ChriBt," Appendix II. 
 
Lect. II.] HISTORIC BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 47 
 
 Thus Professor Paul Wernle, in his admirable book 
 " The Beginnings of Christianity," writes of Jesus in 
 language of profound reverence and sincerity — 
 
 " There was in Him something entirely new, a 
 surpassing greatness, a superhuman self-consciousness 
 which sets itself above all authorities, declaring God's 
 will and promises, imparting consolation, inspiring 
 courage, delivering judgment with divine power, a new 
 mediatorship between God and Man, that left all the 
 former far behind it." ^ 
 
 And of the Apostles after the Ascension he 
 writes — 
 
 " The apostles were animated by a lofty self- 
 consciousness. They felt themselves to be the repre- 
 sentatives of Jesus. They were continuing His work ; 
 as ambassadors for Christ they were ambassadors for 
 God. The new office of mediation between God and 
 Man was continued by the apostles.^ Wherever they 
 appeared they stood in God's stead." * 
 
 And again of St. Paul, in passages for which I would 
 ask your most careful attention, he says — 
 
 " Now St. Paul does not know Him " (that is the 
 human Jesus of the Gospels) ; " he only saw the 
 Heavenly Jesus, and that for a moment. . . . But facts 
 prove that St. Paul knew Jesus in spite of all, yes, 
 knew Him better than all his predecessors. What he 
 brought to the Greeks was no mere product of his 
 imagination, but the real Jesus, with His promise, His 
 
 1 " Beginnings of Christianity," English translation, p. 55. 
 ^ Ibid., p. 119. 3 lUd., p. 139. 
 
48 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. II. 
 
 claims, and His redemption. When St. Paul writes : 
 ' He that hath not the spirij; of Christ is none of His,' 
 and ' He that is in Christ Jesus is a new creature,' he 
 is filled with a profound and genuine impression of the 
 person of Christ." ^ 
 
 And in another place — 
 
 " It is just the Jesus of History that St. Paul 
 grasped with a deep and clear insight, as the Redeemer 
 who leads us ... to the Fatherhood of Grod, and to 
 moral freedom, and who, besides setting the high ideal 
 before us, inspires us at the same time with strength and 
 courage for its realization. It is for the living and 
 loving Jesus that the apostle's high Christology prepares 
 a way into the world." ^ 
 
 It might well seem, as it seems to me, that for those 
 who have studied the development of the Pauline 
 Christology there is, from such premises as these, but 
 one conclusion — the Divinity of Christ. But Dr. 
 Wernle, and much modern Theology with him, refuses 
 to take the step, to draw the inference. 
 
 So much is granted to us and no more. But do we 
 need to ask more? And with so much granted, is it 
 possible for us, is it reasonable, to rest there ? The 
 evidence for Christ's Divinity rests on spiritual experi- 
 ence : ultimately on your experience for you, on mine 
 for me ; but in the recorded experience of other men we 
 may find confirmation for what were otherwise merely 
 subjective and individual. And for this confirmation 
 
 ' "Beginnings of Christianity," p. 267. 
 « MA., p. 239. 
 
Lect.II.] historic basis of christian belief 49 
 
 we go unhesitatingly to St. Paul, St. John, and the 
 
 Book of the Acts of the Apostles, of which the accuracy 
 
 in detail has been so strikingly shown by the researches 
 
 of Professor Ramsay in Asia Minor. There we find this 
 
 conviction, growing indeed in clearness and intensity, 
 
 but essentially primitive, and forming the ground of 
 
 Christian preaching from the day of Pentecost onwards ; 
 
 and, what is more important, so changing the hearts of 
 
 mankind as to make them literally new creatures. And 
 
 this conviction possesses the minds of men who were 
 
 removed only by a few years from the time when Jesus 
 
 lived and worked as an artisan in a country village. 
 
 Some of them had seen Him hanging on the Cross, and 
 
 touched His dead Body. It was not easier, but much 
 
 harder for them than for any succeeding generation to 
 
 think of Him as God. The more we simplify and 
 
 humanize the Picture we take from the Synoptists, the 
 
 plainer and more amazing is the miracle of early 
 
 Christian belief. However much we simplify and 
 
 humanize it, there remains an element which cannot be 
 
 brought under rules and standards which apply to all 
 
 other cases. It is, then, surely not permissible to accept 
 
 the Synoptic narrative, and refuse the evidence of the 
 
 Acts, the Pauline Epistles, and the Fourth Gospel as to 
 
 its meaning. 
 
 "We have a right to say that our assurance of the 
 Divinity of Christ is not founded upon isolated and 
 perhaps disputed texts, but on the impression of Him 
 which we find reflected in the minds and souls of the 
 men of His own time. And further, we have a right to 
 
 B 
 
so THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. II. 
 
 ask our critics, and are bound to consider most seriously 
 for ourselves, whether the admitted facts of the first 
 stage of Christian History are not accounted for more 
 agreeably to reason by this hypothesis than by any 
 naturalistic one that has been offered. 
 
LECTURE III 
 
 THE SPIEITUAL NEED OF HUMANITY 
 
 " Quia fecisti nos ad Te, et iiic[tiietTim est cor nostrum donee 
 requiescat in Te." — ^Augustine. 
 
LECTURE III 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL NEED OF HUMANITY 
 
 " Come Tinto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I 
 will give you rest." — Matt. xi. 28. 
 
 1. In my last lecture I endeavoured to state the reasons 
 wMch justify us in believing the historical truth of the 
 events which reveal to us the Character and Person of 
 Jesus Christ ; and I tried to show that if they are 
 historical, they are also unique in history, and cannot 
 be fully interpreted within the limitations which apply 
 to other facts of human experience. But historical truth 
 of events alone, their uniqueness alone, does not consti- 
 tute a gospel. A gospel must also have the power of 
 satisfying a want. It is the call of the Perfect to that 
 which is imperfect, and suffers in the consciousness of 
 its imperfection. We recognize this Law of man's 
 nature, not only in that higher part of his being which 
 we caU the soul, but universally. The meaning and 
 value of all exact knowledge, whether historical or 
 scientific, lies in its bearing on life. The progress of 
 natural science is determined by the enlargement of 
 man's physical needs. This does not mean that the 
 motive of all scientific research to-day is consciously 
 
54 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. III. 
 
 utilitarian. We speak rightly of the pursuit of know- 
 ledge for its own sake ; the need to be satisfied has 
 come, in many instances, to be an intellectual need. 
 But still the vast system of ordered and linked sciences, 
 which has taken all nature to be its province, must trace 
 back its origin to the half-animal desire of primitive 
 man to be fed, and warm, and safe ; and must acknow- 
 ledge that it has grown pari passu with his needs, as 
 they grew in number and complexity. Even so seeming- 
 abstract a science as Astronomy has its spring in a 
 practical need — 
 
 " The merchant bows unto the seaman's star, 
 The ploughman from the sun his seasons takes." 
 
 It is not by strength, it is not so much even by intellect 
 at first, that man has risen supreme above the other 
 creatures of the earth ; it is by the quality of an heroic 
 discontent that will not accept limitations. Material 
 desires unsatisfied have driven him to search out the 
 secrets of Nature, and by knowing and obeying her laws 
 to enter upon his full heritage as her favoured child. 
 Spiritual longing unsatisfied leads him to seek the 
 knowledge of God, if haply he may find rest for his 
 soul in the assurance that the efi"orts of his finite will 
 are no longer random or mischievous, but in conscious 
 harmony with the Eternal Will. 
 
 2. The need of Religion depends upon the fact of 
 Sin.^ Now we most of us know very well what we mean 
 
 ^ It has heen pointed out to me that these words, taken literally, 
 would imply that sinless beings have no need of Eeligion. That is 
 not my meaning. But I have let the sentence stand, because, for 
 
Lect. III.] THE SPIRITUAL NEED OF HUMANITY 55 
 
 by sin ; but it is not easy to define in set terms, partly 
 because it belongs to the spiritual sphere which has no 
 terminology proper to it, so that we are in fact com- 
 pelled to approximate to our meaning as best we can 
 by metaphor; and partly because the idea of it has 
 been confused by centuries of partisan theology, which 
 has taken one or another metaphor for absolute truth in 
 its speculation on the nature of Sin, its causes, and 
 its remedies. Nevertheless, I believe that it is in the 
 enlightened Christian doctrine of Sin that we shall find 
 the most complete and scientific account of the pheno- 
 mena, and learn what sin is, and what it is not. 
 
 It is a real thing, not an illusion. It is not purely 
 negative, like the shadow a strong light casts ; or like 
 cold, which is merely the absence of heat. It is not a 
 stage in the evolution of goodness, but an active prin- 
 ciple making against goodness. Finally, it is not merely 
 deficiency or failure, but something existing permanently 
 in its efiiect on the soul of the sinner, and his relation 
 to God. Different aspects of it are presented by the 
 similes of a burden which galls and bows down its 
 bearer ; a ferment which taints and assimilates to itself 
 the wholesome substance into which it has found its 
 way ; a disease which paralyzes the will to do right, as 
 physical disease distorts and cripples the body. 
 
 So vivid and alarming a realization of sin as a 
 positive factor in the complex of human affairs is apt to 
 
 fallen humaiiit}^ I think it is true. It is the fact that without 
 God " the efforts of his finite will are random or mischievous," and 
 the sense of this fact, which bring to man the need of Religion. 
 
56 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. III. 
 
 be meaningless or offensive to an age of material pros- 
 perity and scientific advance. It is condemned as 
 producing a morbid habit of introspection, and, in 
 practice, as a hindrance to progress. Science, in effect, 
 borrows the saying of St. Paul, and bids men forget the 
 things that are behind and reach forward to the things 
 that are before — 
 
 " As a matter of fact, the higher man of to-day is 
 not worrying about his sins at all ; . . . his mission, if 
 he is good for anything, is to be up and doing." ^ 
 
 The phrases, torn from their context, have become 
 familiar, almost classical, though really their writer, as I 
 hope to show, before he has told all his mind, restores 
 to us more than he has seemed to take away. However, 
 let us take the words, as he offers them, for the utterance 
 of Orthodox Science. 
 
 " The higher man of to-day is not worrying about 
 his sins at all ; his mission is to be up and doing." 
 
 But surely the fact is, and the trouble is, that in all 
 vigorous activity for good he will find Sin, the sin of 
 other people, and more particularly his own sin, thwart- 
 ing and hampering him at every turn. This only needs 
 pointing out to be obvious, if the good work is social or 
 political ; but even in the study and the laboratory men 
 cannot escape from the sins of sloth or self-indulgence, 
 and, above all, from the various subtle forms of deception 
 and self-deception whereof a cherished theory is often 
 
 ' Sir Oliver Lodge, " Suggestions towards the Ee-interpre- 
 tation of Christian Doctrine." — Eibhert Journal, April, 1904, 
 p. 466. 
 
Lect. III.] THE SPIRITUAL NEED OF HUMANITY 57 
 
 the fruitful parent. The higher man of to-day has 
 need to be on his guard against all these, to say nothing 
 of the oddly ecclesiastical sins of narrowness and 
 intolerance. 
 
 Bat further, if the notion of sin at all is an offence 
 to Orthodox Science, the notion of Original Sin is an 
 abomination — or an absurdity. It declares roundly — 
 
 "As for Original Sin, or birth sin, or other notion of 
 that kind, by which is partly meant the sin of his 
 parents, that sits absolutely lightly on him. As a matter 
 of fact, it is non-existent, and no one but a monk could 
 have invented it. . . . An attempt to punish us for our 
 animal origin and ancestry would be simply comic, if 
 any one could be found who was willing to take it 
 seriously." ^ 
 
 Well, I cannot help taking it seriously, because the 
 spectacle of human beings suffering for the sins of their 
 parents, and worse, being drawn almost irresistibly to 
 sin by an inherited taint or weakness, is always before 
 our eyes. I am quite well aware of the difficulty about 
 the power and justice of God which follows ; but we 
 cannot escape from a dilemma by ignoring the facts. 
 And original sin, the natural tendency of the human 
 heart to selfishness, appears to me to be among the 
 least doubtable facts of our nature. It is there from 
 earliest childhood, and, as bad men prove, and good 
 men know, it endures while life endures. I do not cling 
 to the theological term ; it is associated in some minds 
 with extravagant doctrines and fantastic interpretations ; 
 ^ Sir Oliver Lodge, in the same article. 
 
S8 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. III. 
 
 but in terms of Evolution, or any other terms, the thing 
 is equally true ; the ape and the tiger are not dead in 
 us ; and they will not die of themselves, but revive from 
 time to time in most disconcerting fashion, if we do not 
 worry about them. 
 
 I have suggested that the sense of sin tends to grow 
 dulled in a time like ours, when the most powerful 
 intellects are occupied with the exact methods and 
 measurable achievements of Science, rather than with 
 the unattainable ideals of Art and Poetry ; while the 
 average mind seems to be chiefly busied over making 
 money, and enjoying the apparatus of pleasure and 
 comfort which money will buy. I will add, not that it 
 proves anything, but for your consideration, that in the 
 great creative age of the Christian era, the time when 
 men did beautiful useless things for an idea, when 
 they went on Crusades, and built Cathedrals, the sense 
 of sin was vivid and dominant. Shall I remind you 
 further that Robert Browning thought this one doctrine 
 enough to justify a man in clinging to the faith which 
 enunciated it ? 
 
 " I, still to suppose it true, for my part. 
 See reasons and reasons ; this to begin : 
 'Tis the faith that launched point-blank her dart 
 At the head of a lie — taught Original Sin 
 The corruption of man's heart." ^ 
 
 3. Despite our impatient optimism. Sin is present 
 with us, more dangerous in proportion as its presence is 
 disregarded. When the symptoms of a disease are 
 
 1 II 
 
 Gold Hair : a Story of Pornic." 
 
Lect. III.] THE SPIRITUAL NEED OF HUMANITY 59 
 
 driven below the surface, its poison strikes inward, and 
 invades the very seat of life itself. The sense of sin, 
 unwelcome and discredited, revenges itself in the wide- 
 spread and deep unhappiness of men and women who 
 apparently have all the conditions of happiness. The 
 phenomenon is accurately described in works on religious 
 psychology, and must be familiar to doctors and to 
 parish clergymen. Cases of it are probably not 
 unknown to any one who is gifted with an ordinary 
 amount of sympathy and insight. I am convinced, at 
 any rate, that the thing is common — far more common, 
 perhaps, than we are inclined to suppose. For such 
 unhappiness, as a rule, is studiously concealed, and may 
 easily escape the notice, not only of casual acquaintances, 
 but even of friends and of near kindred. It may, and 
 does, co-exist with a calm and cheerful demeanour before 
 others, and with an active, healthy, fresh-air life, which 
 gives no hint of the inward conflict. But behind the 
 veil of self-control and normal everyday occupations the 
 mind is deeply and miserably preoccupied with doubts 
 and perplexities. It is filled with a sense of the horror 
 and hopelessness of life ; seeing the earth only as full of 
 darkness and cruel habitations. And this Weltschmerz 
 is, as it were, focussed in a more personal feeling : a 
 deep, and, as it seems to the observer, unnecessary dis- 
 courasement as to the individual character and conduct. 
 Sometimes a very high degree of practical unselfishness 
 is accompanied by an extreme sense of uselessness and 
 failure. Such external activity for good without con- 
 scious enthusiasm, almost without interest, is remarkable ; 
 
6o THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. III. 
 
 and the account the actors in the tragedy give of it 
 when questioned is no less remarkable. They explain 
 their perseverance in right action and in the service of 
 others as due, partly to the force of habit, and partly to 
 the imperious need for escape from brooding thoughts ; 
 but stubbornly deny that it has any moral value, either 
 objectively, or to their own character. They maintain 
 that their acts are isolated and meaningless, not spring- 
 ing from any guiding principle within, and in turn not 
 producing that feeling of comfort and power, which 
 follows on really moral action. This is plainly not a 
 complete account ; but it is sincere and subjectively 
 true. It is the want of a guiding principle which 
 poisons the springs of happiness in action, and makes 
 life dull and spiritless. Persons in this state are at 
 once attracted and repelled by the traditional doctrines 
 and usages of religion to which they are accustomed. 
 The mind is very quick to catch at anything formal or 
 unreal in worship, and to be disgusted by it. This 
 hypercritical sensitiveness I attribute to an instinctive 
 reverence for something which is felt to lie behind 
 the forms, and to be dishonoured by shallowness 
 and unreality. But in practice it makes people, and 
 especially young people, cruelly severe and even unfair 
 in their judgment of the professedly religious, and 
 notably of clergymen, with whom they are brought 
 much in contact ; with the result that the sudden over- 
 mastering impulse to unburden their soul, which is 
 characteristic, often carries them rather to a stranger, 
 in whom they think they have detected the marks of a 
 
Lect. III.] THE SPIRITUAL NEED OF HUMANITY 6i 
 
 sincere and sympathetic mind. The first step in self- 
 disclosure is naturally painful and difficult ; but if it 
 meets encouragement, the confidence which follows will 
 be extraordinarily full and unreserved, proving the 
 depth and poignancy of the need which cries for help. 
 Complete frankness, however, does not by any means 
 imply a spirit of complete docility to the chosen coun- 
 sellor, or an unquestioning acceptance of advice and 
 consolation. There is indeed a genuine and hopeful 
 will to be convinced which has inspired the attempt. 
 But, beside it, watchful self- distrust, born of long 
 disappointment, is always ready to criticize new hopes 
 and find them wanting. Any counsel which savours 
 of mere authority or platitude is summarily rejected ; 
 so that if Religion be the remedy proposed, it must be, 
 for the time. Religion in its simplest and least disputable 
 forms — let us say Christ's own teaching, and a few of the 
 more spiritual Psalms. 
 
 The condition of spiritual distress which I have 
 described appears in some cases to follow on a definite 
 emotional shock ; for instance, the painful death of a 
 near relative, or an enforced removal from a dearly 
 loved home ; or, again, on a sudden realization of the 
 evil and misery of the world, such as might be caused 
 by reading a book which exposes the intolerable con- 
 dition of the very poor in our great cities. But in 
 other cases these predisposing circumstances are absent, 
 and even where they are present, it may be held that 
 the crisis is determined rather than caused by the 
 external stimulus. Again, a prolonged emotional 
 
62 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. III. 
 
 strain, with its alternate fits of hectic activity and 
 profound depression, is likely to react on the bodily 
 health, and in turn to be reacted on by it. Yet the con- 
 dition is not, in fact, pathological, to be treated with 
 tonics and change of air, but spiritual. To put it 
 plainly, what these people want is not a doctor, but a 
 priest, or, if you prefer the term, a discreet and learned 
 minister. I respect, and even share the British preju- 
 dice against the Confessional ; but it is a grave question 
 whether the Church of England has shown wisdom or 
 courage, or indeed a proper sense of the value of her 
 office, in dispensing with any organized system of 
 spiritual direction ; and I venture to say that many 
 Nonconformist bodies make more account and more 
 use of this Means of Grace than we do. Preaching 
 may be all very well in its way, but it cannot touch, it 
 does not even profess to touch, such cases as these, 
 which demand a personal answer to a personal appeal, 
 and cannot be reached at all by the most admirable 
 generalities of the pulpit. 
 
 4. The answer which Christianity offers is the 
 Incarnation. In the human life and Death of Christ, 
 with its revelation of the Love and Fatherhood of God, 
 and the Sonship of Man, it finds the guiding principle 
 which lifts all life out of chaos into order ; because in 
 the realization of that Fatherhood and that Sonship, 
 the ancient opposition of Self-love and Self-sacrifice is 
 reconciled and lost. It is true that we were shapen in 
 iniquity and conceived in sin, yet He came not to 
 destroy the Law of our being, but to fulfil. When He 
 
Lect. III.] THE SPIRITUAL NEED OF HUMANITY 63 
 
 took upon Him to deliver man, He did not abhor any- 
 thing that belongs to Man's nature. And therefore 
 His Perfection, tempted in all things like as we are, yet 
 without sin, is the hope of human life. For those who 
 look on it it is not the pattern only, but the motive 
 and the hope of attainment. If we are indeed one 
 with Him and with each other, if He is not made 
 perfect without us, then our dim strivings after good 
 are strangely transfigured ; they have a significance, a 
 place in the divine purpose which they alone can fill : 
 
 " Ego dixi, Dii estis : et filii excelsi omnes," 
 
 if we will ; for Sin appears now less as the spirit which 
 denies ever, than as the spirit which refuses — refuses 
 suffering, refuses union with God and Man. The saving 
 wholesome sense of Sin is a sense of loneliness, of 
 separation from that Harmony to which our being 
 rightly belongs, in which alone the activity of our true 
 nature can find purpose and expression. In every age 
 it has taught men to seek God, if haply they might 
 feel after Him and find Him ; but the Incarnation 
 alone can fully interpret and satisfy the restless yearn- 
 ings of the Soul. Let me put it in the words of the 
 eloquent spokesman and critic of modern Scientific 
 thought. 
 
 " The Sacrifice of Christ has convinced the . . . 
 world of Sin to an unique degree, of its reality and 
 dire consequence, of its unreasonableness, its aspect as 
 a disease that must be cured— with the knife if need 
 be, but cured : we have learnt that it is foreign to the 
 
64 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. III. 
 
 universe, it is not the Will of God, it is not due to His 
 caprice, or amusement, or dictation, or predestination, 
 or pagan example ; it is something which gives even 
 Him pain and suffering ; it is something to be rid of, 
 and there is no peace or joy to be had until unity of 
 Will is secured and past rebellions are forgiven. . . . 
 Forgiveness removes no penalty ; it may even increase 
 pain, though only that of a regenerative kind ; it leaves 
 material consequences unaltered, but it may achieve 
 spiritual reform." ^ 
 
 This last sentence, with its unflinching insistence 
 on a truth which we are all too ready to thrust from 
 us, leads our minds to contemplate the mystery of pain 
 and sorrow in the light of the Incarnation. Without 
 that we are like men walking in the dark, guided 
 vaguely by the voices of comrades in front, and earn- 
 ing a painful knowledge of the path and its direction 
 from their own stumbles and wanderings, moving very 
 slowly, yet moving forward. The experience of the 
 Race, repeated in the experience of each life, has taught 
 us something, often sorely against our wills, of the uses 
 of Suffering. Our first animal instinct is to regard 
 pain, physical and mental, as wholly evil, as the one 
 real evil, to be avoided at any cost ; we shrink from it 
 in ourselves with horror, in others with disgust. I 
 speak of this instinct as original and primitive, a thing 
 which Civilization should long ago have put away ; yet, 
 
 ' Sir Oliver Lodge, Hibbert Journal, October, 1904, pp. 24, 25. 
 See also in " The Substance of Faith allied with Science," Clause 
 VIII., on The Meaning of Sin, pp. 52-55. 
 
Lect. III.] THE SPIRITUAL NEED OF HUMANITY 65 
 
 in fact, it is also a note of over-civilization, dominant 
 in minds which value material comfort above all things. 
 The belief that pain is the one real evil infects much 
 of our social and philanthropic effort to-day, and is a 
 chief obstacle to the acceptance of real Christianity. 
 But short of Christianity, Eeason and Experience teach 
 us better things. Sooner or later we are forced to 
 learn that suffering is the inevitable lot, not to be 
 escaped by any of the sons of men. And after a 
 moment of passionate revolt, we begin to understand 
 that the inevitable is not, or not always, unnecessary 
 and degrading, but in many ways beneficent. We 
 acknowledge the broad justice of the punishment which 
 Nature inflicts on the breaker of her laws ; and are 
 ready to welcome pain in its salutary ofl&ce of warning 
 us off from the dangerous places of life. It tells us of 
 mischief — physical and moral — that may yet be cured, 
 of the false step that need not be repeated. The burnt 
 child dreads the fire, and is better, not for its burn- 
 ing, but for the bitterly won knowledge that fire is 
 treacherous. 
 
 But the usefulness of pain does not end with the 
 negative functions of punishment and prevention. As 
 we grow older, we see for ourselves what we have often 
 heard and only half believed — well for us if we see it 
 in ourselves — that loss and suffering have a power 
 which success and prosperity miss, a power to refine 
 and strengthen the character ; that the noblest work 
 is done by sufferers, and through suffering ; that pain 
 is a condition of all true progress. 
 
 F 
 
66 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. Ill" 
 
 " The pleasures of each generation evaporate in air ; 
 it is their pains that increase the spiritual momentum 
 of the world." ^ 
 
 And last and greatest of all, we learn to feel, 
 though we cannot tell why, that it is our common 
 heritage of pain that unites us to our fellows, that 
 comradeship in suffering draws men and women to- 
 gether closer than any other tie. And when we have 
 wholly learned that, we are not far from the Kingdom 
 of God. Pain is our Schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. 
 What we have hitherto seen as in a glass darkly, the 
 truth that we have learned bit by bit, puzzled and half 
 unwilling, stands out suddenly with startling clearness 
 and force when we see the Perfect Life compact of 
 suffering. The mystery is not logically solved, but it 
 is set aside. The path is still steep and rugged, but 
 Day has dawned upon the travellers, and there is no 
 longer need of the spoken word for guidance. We 
 forget the mystery of pain in the ministry of pain. 
 
 I do not wish to dwell much on the physical suffer- 
 ings of our Lord ; doubtless they were all that the 
 agonized body can endure ; but if we may reverently 
 judge His manhood by what is best in our manhood, 
 they were the least He had to bear ; and unfortunately 
 they are connected in our minds with false and material 
 views of the Atonement. But the mental anguish, 
 which is the portion of all true prophets, was His in 
 more than full measure, heaped up and running over. 
 It was not enough that His own nation rejected and 
 
 ' Illingworth. 
 
Lect. III.] THE SPIRITUAL NEED OF HUMANITY 67 
 
 persecuted Him, His kindred despised and pitied ; but 
 all His life long His chosen disciples knew not what 
 spirit they were of ; they misunderstood and mis- 
 interpreted His teaching, and were disappointed in 
 Him. Even after the Resurrection they ask, " Wilt 
 Thou at this time restore the Kingdom to Israel ? " 
 We judge them purblind and wilful ; but what of us, 
 of us, who, as they did, reverence His Person and 
 acknowledge His Divine Mission ? 
 
 I fear most of us understand Him no more than 
 they. The best we ask, the best we hope of Him, is 
 that He will at this time restore the Kingdom to our 
 little Israel, our beloved Church, our chosen Theory. 
 The cruellest wrong of all still endures — 
 
 " His sad face on the Cross sees only this 
 After the passion of a thousand years." ' 
 
 In pain, in sorrow, and in failure. He is made one 
 with us ; and suffering, His suffering and ours, has its 
 perfect work in us'; not now as a dimly understood, 
 half resisted Law of Nature, but as the Angel of the 
 Passion, which brings us to His Feet, welcoming the 
 sorrow which is the punishment and forgiveness of past 
 rebellion ; and when our souls are refined and tempered 
 in the fire of affliction, raising us again to unimagined 
 heights of love for God and man. 
 
 5. And now the question will reasonably be asked : 
 If this is true, if some men have found enlightenment 
 and salvation in Christ, why is it that the Incarnation 
 
 ^ Browning, " Fra Lippo Lippi." 
 
68 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. III. 
 
 does not enforce its claim on mankind as a whole, and 
 in particular, why does it fail to satisfy so many of the 
 earnest seeking souls who have felt the emptiness and 
 confusion of life as they know it, and long above all 
 things for a clue to the blind labyrinth ? I ascribe its 
 failure, where it does fail, chiefly to two causes — defects 
 not in the Gospel, but in our way of presenting it, which 
 I will call the Intellectual Fallacy and the Magical 
 Fallacy. And by the Intellectual Fallacy I mean the 
 mistake of making Theology equivalent to Religion, 
 instead of regarding it as the study of Religion ; much 
 as if one should declare Biology to be identical with Life, 
 and make it a condition of being so much as born that 
 one should assent to a certain view of highly obscure 
 and controversial questions in that science. I hope that 
 this will not be thought an unfair or irreverent analogy, 
 for it is certainly how the matter appears to many who 
 would be ready to accept Christianity as the Key of 
 Life, but find the way barred, as they suppose, by some 
 dogma they cannot understand, some historical state- 
 ment which appears to lack suflicient evidence. To 
 have a right conception of God and of man's relation 
 to Him is infinitely important ; it is not very important 
 to know, or agree with, what this man or that man has 
 said about Him. It is only human nature to insist on 
 that in which we differ from others : some aspect of 
 doctrine peculiar to our sect, or grateful to our own 
 minds. Still we are bound to remember that any 
 doctrine, however sacred, loses saving power in so far 
 as, and so long as, it is made the subject of controversy. 
 
Lect. III.] THE SPIRITUAL NEED OF HUMANITY 69 
 
 There is a test of fitness for admission to the Kingdom, 
 but with our Shibboleths we are sometimes perilously- 
 near the position of those Pharisees of whom it was 
 said, "Ye shut up the Kingdom of Heaven against men : 
 for ye neither go un yourselves, neither suffer ye them 
 that are entering to go in." 
 
 The Magical Fallacy is far older than Christianity, 
 almost as old as the mind of man. Everywhere in 
 primitive religion we come upon the belief that super- 
 natural powers can be forced into the service of man 
 by a knowledge and use of the right form of words, or 
 of the right ceremonial. 
 
 The god is bound to grant the desires of the wor- 
 shipper who knows the secret. Not faith but exact 
 ritual can move mountains ; 
 
 " Carmina vel caelo possunt deducere lunam." ^ 
 
 Hence followed the necessity of concealing the right 
 method of approaching the gods, lest it should be copied 
 and used against its proper owner, or neutralized by 
 still more potent charms. 
 
 The religion of Israel, with its nobler estimate of 
 the greatness and dignity of God, modifies the crude 
 primitive belief. The obligation is now based upon a 
 covenant or promise freely given. The efiective formula 
 is not imposed upon the Deity, but prescribed by Him ; 
 but in practice the result is the same. The old notion 
 was too congenial to human weakness to be lightly let 
 go, and in spite of the age-long protest of the prophets, 
 ^ Virgil, Eclogue, viii. 69. 
 
70 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. III. 
 
 a mechanical as opposed to a moral conception of religion 
 held its own among the Jews ; it passed over into the 
 Church, and strongly tinges all Mediaeval Christianity. 
 A pleasing and innocent example of its survival is given 
 in the Memoirs of a gentleman of piety and good sense 
 who went crusading with St. Louis of France. 
 
 " There befell us at sea," he says, " a most wondrous 
 thing. We sighted a mountain perfectly round, which 
 lies off Barbary. It was about the hour of Vespers when 
 we sighted it : and we sailed all night and thought to 
 have made more than fifty leagues ; but next day we 
 found ourselves off the very same mountain ; and the 
 same thing befell us twice or thrice. . . . Then a 
 worthy priest, called the Dean of Malrut, told us that 
 they were never afflicted in his parish either with want 
 of water, or with too much rain, or with any other 
 affliction, but that as soon as he had made three 
 processions three Saturdays running, Grod and His 
 Mother delivered them from it. This was a Saturday, 
 and we made the first procession round the two masts 
 of the ship. I myself was carried round by the 
 arms, being grievously sick. Thereafter we saw the 
 mountain no more, and came to Cyprus on the third 
 Saturday." ^ 
 
 We smile at the story, and wonder that a man of 
 undoubted good faith and intelligence could have 
 written it down. We have been taught by experience 
 to reject the magical value of formulas in the physical 
 
 ^ " Memoirs of the Lord of Joiuville," p. 66. A new English 
 version by Ethel Wedgwood. 
 
Lect. Ill] THE SPIRITUAL NEED OF HUMANITY 71 
 
 world. Is it certain that we do not cling to a half- 
 belief in their powers in a higher sphere ? It is surely 
 less superstitious to believe that the good Dean's pro- 
 cession changed the position of a ship in the Mediter- 
 ranean, than to believe that any outward act in itself 
 can affect the relation of a man's soul to God ; or that 
 spiritual benefit can be obtained by means that are not 
 in pari materia. The danger of such superstitious hopes 
 lies for us chiefly in our view of the Sacrament of Holy 
 Communion. We are not to judge that Mystery by the 
 cold light of Reason. It is veiled for us in clouds of 
 reverence and awe. We believe, and we are justified in 
 believing, that there the true worshipper feels a Presence 
 and receives a Gift which are not his but through the 
 Sacrament ; and we need a very strong and delicate 
 sincerity if we would not be tempted to profane the 
 reality and holiness of the thing symbolized, by ascrib- 
 ing a magical virtue to its symbols. Yet if we are to 
 commend the doctrine of God which we profess, we 
 must attain and jealously guard that sincerity. Any 
 teaching which in mistaken reverence gives absolute 
 value to ceremonial acts, is a stumbling-block to honest 
 and iutelligent minds, and finds no support in the 
 teaching of our Lord. 
 
 In the days of His Flesh He submitted Himself to 
 outward forms of religious observance, and He does 
 not dispense us from them ; for He knew that man is a 
 creature of the senses ; so He gave the service of reverent 
 lip and bent knee their place in the religious life ; but 
 it was the second place : " These ought ye to have done, 
 
72 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. III. 
 
 and not to have left the other undone." He cleared for 
 ever from the path of them that seek Him the snare of 
 intellectual subtleties, when he cried, " I thank Thee, 
 Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because Thou hast 
 hid these things from the wise and prudent and revealed 
 them unto babes." * He freed worship from the bondage 
 of forms and ceremonies by His word : " The hour 
 Cometh when ye shall neither in this mountain nor yet 
 at Jerusalem worship the Father. . . . God is a spirit, 
 and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit 
 and in truth." ^ 
 
 1 Luke X. 21. 2 John iv. 21, 24. 
 
LECTURE IV 
 
 WAR AND TEADE 
 
 " It seems impossible to conceive tliree things more opposite 
 at first sight to the Sermon on the Mount than "War, Law, and 
 Trade ; yet Christian society has long since made up its mind 
 about them, and we all accept them as among the necessities or 
 occupations of human society." — Dean Church. 
 
LECTURE IV 
 
 WAR AND TRADE 
 
 " Then came also publicans to be baptized, and said unto John, 
 Master, what shall we do? And he said nnto them. Exact no 
 more than that which is appointed you. And the soldiers lite- 
 wise demanded of him saying, And what shall we do ? And he 
 said unto them, Do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely, 
 and be content with your wages." — Luke iii. 12-14. 
 
 1. So far I have spoken chiefly of the message of Christ 
 to the individual soul. I have tried to show that Chris- 
 tianity, as He taught it, is able to satisfy alike the 
 demands of the intelligence and the cravings of the 
 spirit ; that it gives a true and sufficient answer to 
 the Riddle of Life ; the only answer that will cover all 
 the facts. I must now pass on to consider the still 
 more difficult problem of the relation of the Gospel to 
 the complex life of highly organized societies. The 
 problem includes three questions : one easy to answer, 
 the other two less easy. First, is existing civilization 
 in harmony with the rule of life laid down by Christ ? 
 Second, can it, as it stands, be brought into harmony 
 with that rule ? And third, if the opposition proves to 
 be wholly or in part irreconcilable, which is to give 
 
 way? 
 
 In this Lecture I propose first to study the modern 
 
76 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. IV. 
 
 State in its relation to other states and communities, 
 reserving till later the consideration of the State's 
 treatment of its own citizens, and their dealings with 
 one another. 
 
 The two great external manifestations of national 
 activity are Trade and War. They are so nearly con- 
 nected that the line between them cannot always be 
 clearly defined, and are in fact two aspects of the same 
 national rivalry. War has commercial prosperity as its 
 aim and as its basis. The Flag has learned to follow 
 Trade. In a practical age wars are mostly fought for 
 markets, and the gigantic cost of armaments has made 
 kings and statesmen more than ever dependent on the 
 help and good will of great financiers. And Trade has 
 all the spirit, and some of the forms of War. The 
 trader does not commonly go forth with drums beating 
 and colours flying, as he did in the great days of the 
 Spanish Main, when there was no peace south of the 
 Line. The age may be past in which our own East 
 India Company and the Netherlands Company were 
 independent polities, with armies and fleets and ambas- 
 sadors of their own, who treated on equal terms with 
 Eastern princes and commonwealths, or fought them 
 as seemed best in their own eyes, and dealt summarily 
 with interlopers in their seas as pirates and outlaws. But 
 the spirit of the old adventurers is not dead. It is not 
 so long since we saw a Chartered Company levying 
 war in form on its own account. And a strong and 
 ambitious nation is always ready by war, or diplomacy 
 based on the menace of war, to open ports and markets 
 
Lect. IV.] JVAjR and trade 
 
 77 
 
 for its own merchants, or keep them closed against 
 their rivals, and sometimes to force their commodities 
 upon unwilling purchasers. And even where there is 
 no question of armed intervention, Trade is still the 
 counterpart of War in its merciless dealing with 
 opponents, its indifference to the welfare of non- 
 combatants, and its calculated sacrifice of the rank and 
 file of its own armies in the cause of ultimate success. 
 Its methods can only be described in metaphors of 
 battlefield and siege ; for it is essentially a truceless 
 fight for what both sides desire, and only one can 
 possess. 
 
 But there is another side to the picture. If the sole 
 result of it all was the amassing of a fortune by one 
 man, or a few men, we might simply deny the value of 
 the end, and the means would stand condemned with it. 
 But the question is not so simple. Whatever we may 
 think of millionaires, we must admit that the making of 
 one means the employment of a great deal of labour, and 
 the encouragement of talent and energy. The defenders 
 of the existing system recognize the evils inherent in 
 it ; but maintain that only on these terms can great 
 commercial enterprises be buUt up ; and that the distri- 
 bution of wealth is governed and governable, not by 
 moral, but by economic laws. I hope to return later to 
 this argument, for I am bound to question whether the 
 desired end be not attainable at a less sacrifice. But for 
 the present it is sufficient to observe that some of the 
 maxims of policy and business are admittedly opposed 
 to the precepts of the Gospel. 
 
78 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. IV. 
 
 2. In the case of War, the opposition would seem 
 at first sight still clearer. In the light of the Sermon 
 on the Mount, it looks as if War could never be neces- 
 sary or justifiable. And here, at least, there is no 
 disquieting plea from the economists to be met. Huge 
 armaments do indeed employ a vast mass of labour, 
 but at what cost to the commonwealth ! In Europe 
 to-day, millions of hands are withdrawn from productive 
 employment, intelligence and scientific ability are largely 
 diverted from beneficent channels, to create and main- 
 tain a vast and complicated machinery, which in all 
 probability will never be used at all ; and if it is used, is 
 framed solely for the destruction of life and property. 
 The cost of armaments, it is said, and perhaps truly, is 
 a guarantee of peace ; but it is a ruinously expensive 
 system of insurance against the self-seeking spirit which 
 is alleged to be the mainspring of all enterprise. And 
 if War, and the preparation for War, are clumsy and 
 wasteful methods of attaining their professed purpose, 
 still less, it would appear, can they be reconciled with 
 the teaching of Christ. " Thou shalt not kill," is a plain 
 command ; it is confirmed and extended in the Sermon 
 on the Mount, and the enunciation of the lex talionis in 
 the Mosaic Law is met and annulled with " But I say 
 unto you, resist not the evil." Is not the command 
 plain and absolute ? The servants of the Kingdom 
 which is not of this world must not fight. The Quaker 
 position is the only honest and reasonable position. 
 But in fact, the question is, as we know very well, not 
 so simple. In the first place, we must clear away a 
 
Lect. IV.] WAJi AND TRADE 
 
 79 
 
 great deal of prejudice and sentiment whicli cluster 
 round it and seem to belong to it, but will be found on 
 examination to be quite irrelevant. We must make 
 quite certain that the objections we feel to war are 
 really Christian. 
 
 We can all remember the shock of horror, almost 
 of astonishment, which ran through the Press and the 
 public mind in this country, when the first reports came 
 that men were being killed in considerable numbers 
 in the South African War. It was a salutary shock ; 
 because it brought home to us what had been long 
 forgotten, the true cost and misery of War, and dashed 
 our light-hearted illusions with a cold touch of reality. 
 A keen emotion, as yet not dulled by use, at the thought 
 that men had died for their country, and that English 
 homes were mourning for their loss, was the better part 
 of the impulse that disturbed our complacency ; but it 
 had baser elements than pity and sympathy. It is an 
 ungracious task to analyze sentiments which make men 
 gentler and more merciful ; but I think it needs to be 
 said that the exaggerated respect for human life, which 
 is a distinctive note of our own age as compared with 
 all previous history, is not in itself a Christian feeling. 
 It is due partly, no doubt, to the greater security with 
 which good government and efficient police surround us. 
 We are not accustomed to see men killed ; and therefore 
 we have come to think violent death a more dreadful 
 thing than our fathers thought it : more dreadful, 
 perhaps, than it really is. But a deeper cause of the 
 tremendous value we put on life, and our corresponding 
 
8o THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. IV. 
 
 terror of sudden deatli, is our waning faith in immor- 
 tality ; and, wliat seems to me more serious, a waning 
 faith in the value of spiritual things as against material. 
 We allow ourselves to be cowed and shaken by a half 
 belief, that if you kill a man there is an end of him in 
 every way ; an end of action, an end of happiness. If 
 you take away his bodily life, you take away everything. 
 Happily, it is only a half belief. It may be unassailable 
 in logic ; but men very commonly do not act upon it 
 when it comes to the pinch. They throw their lives 
 away for fifty things whereof the value cannot be 
 worked out in terms of earthly pleasure or profit ; and 
 the higher part of our nature honours and justifies their 
 action. But if such a belief were far stronger on 
 grounds of experience than it is, it is profoundly and 
 essentially unchristian. The Christian is taught to hold 
 life very lightly in the balance with what is eternal. 
 One great part — if not truly the whole — of our Lord's 
 work was the changing of values ; and this change of 
 value is the very centre of His teaching by precept and 
 example. " He that findeth his life shall lose it, and he 
 that loseth his life for My sake shall find it." ^ It is 
 not even necessary to accept the doctrine of personal 
 immortality in order to receive this teaching : that 
 the true value of life lies, not in retaining it at all costs 
 as a "permanent possibility of sensation;" but in using it 
 and losing it, if need be, in the cause of Righteousness. 
 But, after all, we must return to the plain com- 
 mands, "Thou shalt not kill," "Resist not the evil." 
 
 ' Matt. X. 39. 
 
Lect. IV.] IVAJi AND TRADE 81 
 
 There they stand for us to take or leave ; but if we 
 choose to leave them, we have no right to call ourselves 
 disciples of Christ. The danger of weakening or ex- 
 plaining away plain commands is great. But there is 
 another danger : the danger of taking isolated texts 
 and disregarding all else. We must read Christ's words 
 in their immediate context, and in their connection 
 with His whole teaching. Dr. Gore points out, in his 
 " Commentary on the Sermon on the Mount," that the 
 words " Resist not the evil " are spoken to the indi- 
 vidual believer ; and, from the individual, they demand 
 absolute and unqualified obedience ; but they do not 
 exclude corporate action for the repression of wrong, 
 which is actually commanded in a later passage in 
 this same collection of our Lord's sayings. The dis- 
 tinction is not in the commentary, but in the Text. 
 
 " We observe," he writes, " two opposite duties. 
 There is the clear duty, so far as mere personal feeling 
 goes, of simple self-effacement. Only then, when we 
 have got our wills thoroughly subordinated to God's 
 will, when all the wild instinct of revenge is subdued, 
 are we in a position to consider the other duty, and to 
 ask ourselves what the maintenance of the moral order 
 of society may require of us." ^ 
 
 The duty of interference is secondary and derivative. 
 It can properly be exercised only by those who fulfil 
 the individual duty; the hope of awakening the 
 dormant conscience of Society lies far less in any ex- 
 ternal pressure, than in the moral power of lives in 
 1 1904 edition, pp. 85, 86. 
 
 6 
 
82 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. IV. 
 
 whicli tlie spirit of personal resentment and reprisal 
 lias been subdued ; and, that pressure being external, 
 its use is temporary in proportion to its success, and 
 ceases to be, when it has accomplished its purpose ; it 
 is a proof and confession of imperfection ; but while 
 society is imperfect, moral discipline is necessary ; and 
 must be enforced, if need be, by the sharpest sanctions. 
 If the world were Christian, there would be no War and 
 no need of War ; but in a world that is slowly becoming 
 Christian, War is not the worst thing we see, nor the 
 first to be abolished. So long as men live by the 
 principles of selfishness, a just war will often be, not 
 only inevitable, but better than ignoble peace ; and so 
 long as War is necessary, it will be most mercifully 
 carried on by strict adherence to its own stern rules. 
 The General or the Nation that tries to mingle peace 
 with war, is like the surgeon whose hand falters in 
 pity, and so prolongs the misery he thinks to palliate. 
 
 In this connection we may observe that Jesus 
 Himself did not anticipate the speedy cessation of 
 War, nor denounce War as such ; indeed, in His 
 comment on the Sixth Commandment He virtually 
 draws the distinction which our conscience feels to 
 exist between War and Murder ; it is not the act of 
 slaying, but the spirit of murder, hatred, and revenge, 
 which He condemns. The distinction is for us a matter 
 of very delicate casuistry in practice, and can easily be 
 attacked in theory ratione mentis acervi ; but it exists. 
 It is more than habit which makes us hold that there 
 is a moral difference between killing a man in battle, 
 
Lect. IV.] WA^ AND TRADE 83 
 
 and killing the same man from motives of greed or 
 revenge. This belief finds strong support in the good 
 effects which War has on moral character. Some men 
 it brutalizes and hardens, but the Christian soldier is 
 a familiar and genuine type. It is good for most of 
 us to be brought face to face with hardship and the 
 peril of death ; and the discipline of War sometimes 
 produces, not only the admirable virtue of courage, 
 but qualities still more precious, obedience, loyalty, 
 self-sacrifice, and even tenderness, in a greater degree 
 than the routine of Peace. The ideal of Chivalry is 
 not wholly fanciful. I will borrow a poet's description 
 of what Chivalry seemed to the noblest of those who 
 saw it, and loved it in its prime. 
 
 " Let me understand you," said Stephen. " Chivalry 
 as I have seen it from a distance, I have taken to 
 mean a love of fighting, a love of pageantry, and a 
 fantastic love of women, mixed into a rather unwhole- 
 some ferment." 
 
 " You have lived abroad," replied Lord Bryan ; 
 " there is no place in England for that kind of folly, 
 and so far as I know there never has been. For us 
 Chivaby is a plain rule of conduct, by which a man 
 may live in a world of men, without savagery and 
 without monkery." 
 
 " Good ! " exclaimed Stephen ; " but how ? " 
 
 "Look at the Prince," said Lord Bryan; "it is 
 written large in him. He is pious and courteous, the 
 brother of all brave men, the servant of the weak, 
 the beaten, and the suffering. In short, he loves God 
 
84 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. IV. 
 
 with all his heart, and his neighbour as himself. What 
 is that ? " 
 
 " That is Christianity ; but I ask you again, how- 
 does loving your neighbour come to include fighting 
 him or taking his life ? " 
 
 " I reply with another question. Are you not 
 confusing the unreal with the real — ^putting the material 
 before the spiritual ? The warfare of every one of 
 us must end in death ; we need not love a man less 
 because it falls to us to strike the final stroke ; it 
 is only the hatred, the treachery, the selfishness that 
 make the crime of murder ; and what injury can the 
 real man sufier except those inflicted by himself ? " ' 
 
 3. We should conclude, then, that no sweeping 
 judgment, either of approval or condemnation, can be 
 passed on War as a whole. Like Civil Justice, it is a 
 terrible remedy, and it behoves those who use it to 
 have a clear conscience and clean hands. Yet, like all 
 inflictions of pain, it may be salutary. But if it is 
 used wantonly, or for wrong and selfish ends, it is 
 abominable and unpardonable. And it has too often 
 been used both wantonly and selfishly. Fighting was 
 the chief business and amusement of the upper classes 
 of Europe in the Middle Ages, and that Chivalry, which 
 gave such romantic grace and dignity to noble life, had 
 a very ugly side. The delicate consideration of knight 
 for knight took little account of the churl. We read 
 of Edward the Black Prince, that after Poitiers — 
 
 " When the French King was first brought to him, 
 ^ " The Old Country," by Henry Newbolt, p. 304. 
 
Lect. IV.] IVAJi AND TRADE 85 
 
 he offered, quite naturally and simply, to help him off 
 with his armour. The King said with great dignity, 
 ' Thank you, ccfusin, but after this it is not for you 
 to serve me ; no Prince has ever won such honour in 
 a isingle day.' The Prince was touched to the quick, 
 he cannot bear that his honour should be another's 
 misfortune. He said in a very low voice, ' God forgive 
 me this victory.' " ^ 
 
 We admire the Prince's exquisite and sincere 
 humility and courtesy to his royal prisoner, but I 
 wonder what the French peasants of the time thought 
 of the Black Prince. They were outside the rules of 
 the Great Game, and were harried alternately, without 
 mercy or remedy, by their own forces and by the enemy. 
 
 Chivalry, as an organized system, is dead ; but the 
 baser part of it still lives in Militarism, the spirit 
 which admires War for War's sake, and in some 
 countries gives the Army the privilege of despising 
 and looking down on the civilian and the worker. 
 That spirit has never been congenial to the English 
 character. The bitter lesson of the short military 
 tyranny of Cromwell has saved us from that danger 
 tiU now ; but it is a danger, and when we are told that 
 the one thing needful in the education of a Christian 
 boy is that he should be trained to kill his fellow- 
 creatures with skill and certainty, we begin to have 
 ground for uneasiness. 
 
 Yet among the causes which have tempted men 
 to aggressive wars, a pure love of fighting is the rarest, 
 " The Old Country," p. 299. 
 
86 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. IV. 
 
 and perhaps the most respectable, and in nearly every 
 case some more solid gain has been the object. In old 
 days kings fought for glory and territory ; either 
 in pursuance of an alleged right like Edward III., 
 or in cynical disregard of all rights like Louis XIV. 
 Or the motive might be the desire to divert to other 
 fields energies which were growing unmanageable at 
 home. So it was when Chichele counselled Henry V. 
 to make the War of Agincourt. So Napoleon III. was 
 lured into a conflict with Germany in 1870. So, we 
 are told, Russia lately provoked Japan, as a last hope 
 of preventing or deferring Revolution. But these are 
 causes which influence kings and statesmen, and, as I 
 suggested above, it is not kings and statesmen any longer 
 who have the last word in the policy of nations, but 
 financiers. We grow more and more practical ; and 
 War that was the mistress of Princes, has fallen to be 
 the handmaid of Commerce. And of such a war as 
 that it is a ticklish thing to speak. We are too near 
 one ; and with the most scrupulous care I shall be 
 fortunate indeed if I offend none. 
 
 " Periculosae plenum opus aleae 
 
 Tentabo, et incedam per ignes 
 
 Suppositos oineri doloso." 
 
 At least experience has taught us that a Nation does 
 well to be sure it knows what it is fighting for, before 
 it takes the field, and to weigh well the magnitude 
 of the task it has undertaken, and the sacrifices which 
 will have to be made before the end. So much perhaps 
 we are agreed upon ; but we are not agreed upon the 
 
Lect. IV.] JVAJ? AND TRADE 87 
 
 question of the right attitude of a great commercial 
 Empire to less civilized peoples on its borders. It is 
 a question which our position in the world forces us 
 to answer as a Nation ; one which as investors many 
 of us are under obligation to answer to our consciences. 
 And in those cases where the attractions of profitable 
 speculation are plainly on one side, and Christian duty 
 on the other, it takes some moral courage to answer 
 it sincerely. We may be justly convinced that we 
 are able to improve the resources of a country to better 
 effect than its native inhabitants either can or will; 
 but it does not follow that we have therefore a right 
 to expropriate them, either by summary process of arms, 
 or by the slower and more degrading extinction that 
 befalls a savage race which is brought in contact with 
 the vices and distempers of civilization. It is at least 
 clear that for a society or an individual claiming the 
 name of Christian, there must be no War of aggression 
 for the sake of gain, either under the forms of War 
 or under the forms of Trade. Only extreme necessity 
 and the strictest purity of motive can justify War ; 
 but it appears that there are circumstances in which 
 a Christian Society is not only permitted but compelled 
 to apply to moral evil the drastic surgery of pain and 
 death, if it plainly cannot be cured otherwise. 
 
 ov TTjOos iarpov cro^ov 
 6p7jViTv £7ro)Sas irpb'S TOfiZvTL Tn^/jLan. 
 
 4. And if the violent remedy of War be ever 
 allowable, it should be easy by comparison to bring 
 ' Sophocles, " Ajax," 682. 
 
88 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. IV. 
 
 within tlie Eule of the Gospel the peaceful and benefi- 
 cent activities of Manufacture and Commerce which 
 put the gifts of Nature at the service of man. But 
 as a matter of experience we find that here Christianity 
 is more frankly excluded, and that, not only by those 
 who are directly interested — merchants, speculators, 
 investors, and the like — but by others, who do not 
 gain, but rather suffer by its exclusion ; and, strangest 
 of all, by many who profess and practise Christianity 
 in their private lives. There appears to be a general 
 consent, the more powerful in practice that it is seldom 
 expressed in words, that Christian morals have no 
 place in Business. Such an attitude is quite intelli- 
 gible for those whose one idea of the purpose of business 
 is buying cheap and selling dear, and so making the 
 largest possible profit ; but it is shared by people who 
 have no selfish end to serve by it, and who sincerely 
 dislike oppression and dishonesty. 
 
 May I, without seeming censorious, take a concrete 
 instance ? It has been a common experience of late, 
 when a certain much controverted expedient has been 
 under discussion, to hear the question settled by the 
 plea that " the gold cannot be extracted otherwise." 
 The point to notice is that quite good men regarded 
 that argument as final. But just consider it for a 
 moment in the light of Christ's teaching on Riches. 
 One cause of this state of mind is undoubtedly a false 
 estimate of the importance of being rich. But another, 
 and I think a more fundamental cause is a wrong 
 conception of Christianity and its sphere. 
 
Lect. IV.] IVAJi AND TRADE 89 
 
 " As long as Christianity is content with what you 
 call humble aims, that is to say, as long as it is willing 
 to be regarded merely as the dogma of an established 
 sect which is not to interfere with the movements of 
 human society at all, which is to leave it to regulate 
 itself upon the most selfish tyrannical hateful maxims, 
 and only to prevent the sufferers from disturbing its 
 movements ; so long the most vague dreams of fancy 
 which have a show of freedom, or the most terrible 
 despotism which has a show of government, will be 
 preferred to it." ^ 
 
 These disquieting words of Frederick Denison 
 Maurice are, thank God, a shade less applicable to us 
 to-day than when they were spoken ; for they have 
 done some of their work in awaking the Christian 
 conscience ; but what they have done is little compared 
 with what they have yet to do before we get Eeligion 
 into its right place in the national life. And if their 
 purpose has been in some measure fulfilled, their 
 warning is more abundantly fulfilled. The " terrible 
 despotism which has a show of government " is realized 
 in the great commercial monopolies which we call 
 Trusts. The Trusts are useful in a way which their 
 promoters probably do not contemplate. They have 
 proved that Combination is stronger than Competition, 
 and have invented and perfected an organization which 
 may be used for very different ends. What groups of 
 men have done for their own advantage and profit, 
 Society can do for the profit and advantage of all. 
 ' " Christian Socialism," by P. D. Maurice. 
 
go THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. IV. 
 
 Meanwhile the system has made the Middleman, the 
 manufacturer and distributor, absolute master of the 
 producer, the workman, and the consumer, with what 
 results to these classes we know. And in revenge, 
 the few who reap the gigantic profits do not seem to 
 get much good of them. It looks as if there were a 
 Law of Nature, perhaps a Law of God, which prevents 
 any single man from rightly enjoying or using monstrous 
 wealth. After all, there is a limit to the pleasurable 
 spending of money on the most costly and ingenious 
 forms of self-indulgence ; and when the hugely rich try to 
 divert some portion of their swollen gains to benefit the 
 fellow-creatures they have exploited, they are not very 
 successful ; their excursions into philanthropy are apt 
 to be mischievous or absurd : there is, as old-fashioned 
 people would say, no blessing on it. The French 
 Crusader, whose book I have mentioned before, has a 
 word so much in point that I cannot refrain from 
 quoting it — 
 
 " The Devil," he says, " is so cunning about it, that 
 in the case of great usurers and robbers, he wiles them 
 into giving to God that which they ought to restore to 
 its owners."^ 
 
 5. In this country we have not yet had full experi- 
 ence of the effects of monopolies ; we are still suffering 
 rather from the evils of unregulated competition. Of 
 these evils we are all becoming acutely conscious, 
 though we are not at all agreed on the right means 
 for remedying them. The under-payment of certain 
 ' " Memoirs of the Lord of Joinville," p. 15. 
 
Lect. IV.] IVAJi AND TRADE 91 
 
 classes of labour is apparently inevitable under strict 
 economic laws, yet it is an intolerable evil, scandalous 
 in itself, but still more dreadful in its effects upon the 
 physical and moral condition of future generations. It is 
 gradually coming to be recognized that it is the. interest 
 of the employer to pay his workers something more 
 than a bare subsistence wage — what we may call a self- 
 respect wage ; but this motive operates hitherto chiefly 
 in trades where the workers are able to combine and 
 help themselves. There are other classes of workers 
 with whom this is not the immediate interest of the 
 employer. It pays him better to give them a wage 
 that will just keep them able to work for a few years, 
 and when they break down, to take others in their 
 place. This is the case just in those trades where the 
 employer's profit is small, so that he is under strong 
 temptation to save where he can ; and where it is not 
 possible for the workers to combine and protect them- 
 selves by a standard rate of wages ; and where, if one 
 rebels or falls out, there are plenty of others ready to 
 take the work and the starvation pay. 
 
 We see in the condition of unorganized and casual 
 labour in our great cities the most striking form of 
 the evil, but it is not confined to them. The relation 
 of Capital to Labour everywhere is strained and un- 
 satisfactory, and will continue to be so, so long as they 
 are regarded and regard themselves as enemies, trying 
 to get the better of each other. The only permanent 
 solution lies in an alliance of Capital and Labour, 
 which will give to the worker a direct interest in the 
 
92 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. IV. 
 
 success and efficiency of tlie enterprise in which he is 
 engaged. 
 
 Most of us have not a direct connection with the 
 employment of labour on a large scale, and we may 
 persuade ourselves that great industrial questions are 
 beyond our powers of understanding or interference, 
 and therefore do not involve either responsibility or 
 personal interest for us ; but there is a relation in 
 which we are all forced into contact with Trade, and 
 are all affected by the state of commercial morality, 
 and affect it in turn — the relation of Buyer and Seller. 
 We may read reports in the papers of Trade Disputes, 
 of Strikes and Lock-outs, statistics of unemployment, 
 even accounts of terrible poverty and degradation, 
 without feeling that they touch us very nearly ; but 
 it is a different tale when we find that we have not 
 bought, perhaps cannot buy, what we intended to pay 
 for ; that we have been cheated by a skilfully drawn 
 misstatement of the quality or origin of goods that we 
 have purchased ; when a deliberately scamped bit of 
 plumbing has brought sickness or death into our house- 
 hold ; when we discover that the loyalty of our servants 
 has been bought away from us by a pushing tradesman, 
 with bribes that ultimately come out of our own 
 pockets. The adulteration of food probably falls 
 hardest on the very poor, who have little margin of 
 choice, and are obliged to take what they can get from 
 the shops where they must deal, and is therefore a 
 most serious evil in its effects on the physique of our 
 toilers. But dishonest workmanship and bribery affect 
 
Lect. IV.] WAJi AND TRADE 93 
 
 all classes alike, and the welfare of the Nation as a 
 whole more seriously than that of any single class. A 
 Committee of the London Chamber of Commerce nine 
 years ago reported that — 
 
 " Secret Commissions in various forms are prevalent 
 in almost all trades and professions to a great extent, 
 and that in some trades the practice has increased, and 
 is increasing." ^ 
 
 And since then this evU has been considered great 
 enough to call for legislative action. It is probably 
 true, as we are told on good authority, that, " speaking 
 generally, men who transact business to a fairly large 
 extent, or who enjoy a practical monopoly, as owning a 
 well-established trade with an assured amount of custom, 
 are more or less distinguishable from those who occupy 
 various positions in the descending scale." ^ 
 
 But it is not universally true. Even the great 
 Houses are sometimes driven by the stress of competi- 
 tion to methods which no honest man would contem- 
 plate in his personal dealings. It is not an unheard-of 
 thing that an engineering firm of standing and repute 
 should cut the Government stamp out of girders which 
 had been passed by the Inspector, and let it into 
 inferior, or, at any rate, untested stuff. The audacity 
 of the fraud and its cruelty — for the soundness of a 
 girder may mean the lives of many men — give it a 
 bad pre-eminence ; but it is caused and excused by the 
 
 ^ Eeport adopted by the Chamber, July 7, 1898. 
 2 " Commericial Morality," by the Eev. H. S. Holland and the 
 Eev. J. Carter, p. 3. 
 
94 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. IV. 
 
 same reasons as the obtaining of contracts by influence 
 or bribery, which appears, by what comes out from 
 time to time, to be a common thing. Custom of the 
 trade emerges on all sides as a hindrance to honest 
 work and impartial dealing. Every part of the fabric 
 of Commerce seems to be tainted with one of these 
 three plagues — adulteration, misrepresentation, bribery. 
 It is an ugly indictment. But we are not justified 
 in saying that business men, contractors, tradesmen, 
 are wickeder than other people, or even wickeder than 
 we are. " Think ye that they are sinners above all 
 men ? I tell you, Nay : but, except ye repent, ye 
 shall all likewise perish." ^ In fact, we are the great 
 sinners ; the men who cheat us, and oppress the labourer, 
 are the victims partly of our faults as well as of their 
 own. If this is not immediately apparent, let us 
 consider the three following propositions : — 
 
 First, " Most of the tricks and immoralities of trade 
 are due to the increasing stress of competition." Second, 
 "It is the ordinary consumer who is largely to blame 
 for this excessive competition, through the prevailing 
 passion for cheap bargains." And third, " The responsi- 
 bility of deciding how trade should be carried on lies 
 upon the conscience and intelligence of the general 
 public." ^ 
 
 This passion for cheapness must not be dignified by 
 the name of thrift. Thrift is to abstain from buying 
 things we cannot afibrd. The passion for cheapness 
 arises either from the desire — generally, one is glad 
 
 ■ Luke xiii. 4, 5. ^ " Commercial Morality," p. 5. 
 
Lect. IV.] IVAJi AND TRADE 9S 
 
 to think, disappointed — to get more than we pay for ; 
 or from the still meaner wish to seem richer than 
 we are. And if we do succeed in our bargain, succeed 
 in stealing some part of the true price of what we 
 buy, still it has to be paid for, dearly, thrice over ; 
 paid for in our own loss of honesty and self-respect, 
 in the suffering of fellow-creatures, in the demoraliza- 
 tion of Trade. And yet, once more, it is paid for in a 
 very practical way ; for a forced and artificial cheapness 
 kills good work, and drives out genuine commodities. 
 When we have indulged ourselves for a little while in 
 buying an inferior substitute cheap, we find we cannot 
 buy the real thing we wanted either dear or cheap. 
 
 We have tried Competition to the full, and it has 
 made life into an unending struggle : nothing so re- 
 spectable as a real War, with its clear issues and 
 definite results ; but rather like the aimless, murderous 
 bickerings of savage tribes, which give to the strong 
 hand for a moment more than its share, at the cost 
 of infinite material waste, suffering, and moral degrada- 
 tion. Those who have suffered most in the past have 
 learned the lesson — that in co-operation, the sacrifice 
 of a part of the individual claim, lies their strength. 
 Trade unions are not faultless ; they have had their 
 mistakes, even their crimes ; their spokesmen are apt 
 to be self-assertive and inconsiderate ; but they had, 
 and stUl have, a long account to make up before the 
 balance is even ; and if we consider the state of Labour 
 from which they sprang, the work they have done 
 hitherto must be reckoned wholly for good. 
 
96 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. IV. 
 
 And now the day of power has dawned for the 
 labouring classes, and with power comes danger. If 
 they return evil for evil, and in their turn exact more 
 than is their due ; if they use their strength for oppres- 
 sion and injustice, if they try to outlaw the capitalist, 
 and the employer, and their own uncovenanted brethren, 
 they will not only fail of their purpose, but they will 
 fall hopeless and unregretted like other tyrannies 
 before them. But if they resolve to carry out the Law 
 of Co-operation with justice and mercy, they have a 
 better hope than kings and priests have ever had ; they 
 are nearer to Christ, because they have been poor and 
 despised and oppressed. But it is the Spirit of Christ 
 alone that can bring the great work to accomplishment. 
 Self-interest has proved itself too weak and short- 
 sighted a motive to make men work together for good. 
 There is nothing but a belief in the Fatherhood of God 
 and the Oneness of men with Him and in Him that 
 can make us think of others and treat them as 
 brethren, seeing our good in their good. And the 
 thought of the Fatherhood of God takes away the 
 great motive of selfish competition. Because He is 
 our Father, we need not be troubled about the neces- 
 saries of life — what we shall eat, and what we shall 
 drink, and wherewithal we shall be clothed. Which 
 commandment and promise certainly do not mean that 
 we are to sit with folded hands and vacant minds ; but 
 that, if we are doing our work in the world, we shall 
 have enough, and need not and must not be anxious 
 about more. If we could learn and teach these two 
 
Lect. IV.] IVAJ? AND TRADE 97 
 
 lessons of the Fatherhood of God, to care for others 
 and to put away over-care for ourselves ; a good many 
 economic problems would be solved by ceasing to 
 exist. We need not then despair of seeing, what 
 sounds so impossible, so absurd to-day, every class 
 in the commonwealth fulfilling the function for which 
 it is really fitted, which it alone can properly fulfil, 
 pursuing not its own interest, but the interest of its 
 correlative ; the employer seeing to it that Labour has 
 a fair wage and wholesome conditions ; the Trade 
 Union exacting from its members a good day's work ; 
 the buyer insisting on prices that are just to the work- 
 man and the seller ; while the seller takes care that the 
 buyer gets what he pays for in good measure. It is 
 the vision of a Trade Utopia, yet not beyond realization 
 — if men were Christians. 
 
LECTURE Y 
 
 SOCIAL QUESTIONS 
 
 " A stem discouragement of the accumulation of wealth, 
 except as held consciously on trust for the public good ; a 
 strenuous opposition to the development of luxury as distinct 
 from knowledge and beauty ; a constant practical realization 
 of the temper of contentment, with sufficient and wholesome 
 food and lodgement, air and clothing, work and leisure, and of 
 the greater blessing of giving as compared with receiving." — 
 Gore. 
 
LECTUEE V 
 
 SOCIAL QUESTIONS 
 
 " But Jesus called them unto Him, and said, Ye know that 
 the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they 
 that are great exercise authority upon them. But it shall not be 
 so among you : but whosoever will be great among you, let him 
 be your minister ; and whosoever will be chief among you, let 
 him be your servant : even as the Son of Man came not to be 
 ministered unto, but to minister." — Matt. xx. 25-28. 
 
 1. An objection is commonly taken to the teaching of 
 Jesus as a rule of life on the ground that it is anti- 
 social, or at least ignores the social problems which 
 are our chief trouble and our chief interest at the 
 present day. It is pointed out that a general and 
 literal observance of certain precepts which are of the 
 essence of His teaching in the Sermon on the Mount 
 would mean the dissolution of the social order as it 
 exists. There is the precept of boundless generosity : 
 " Give to him that asketh of thee, and from him that 
 would borrow of thee turn not thou away ; " ' the pre- 
 cept of absolute non-resistance to physical, legal, and 
 official violence : " Whosoever shall smite thee on the 
 right cheek, turn to him the other also. If any man will 
 sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him 
 
 ' Matt. V. 42. 
 
102 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. V. 
 
 have thy cloke also. And whosoever shall compel thee 
 to go a mile, go with him twain." ^ 
 
 Such maxims as these strike right across the ideas 
 of property, discipline, and the personal rights of the 
 citizen, on which our civilization is founded ; and, 
 in fact, no one, or hardly any one, attempts to obey 
 them literally. But it does not follow that they are 
 to be rejected forthwith as impracticable. The divine 
 paradox claims our attention by its inconsistency with 
 our practice, and with the principles which we are 
 accustomed to accept as axioms of social conduct. 
 
 Without going to the length of maintaining that 
 whenever the laws of Society appear to conflict with 
 any single utterance of our Lord, they must at once 
 be rejected by Christians, we may inquire how far the 
 complications we are trying to unravel, spring from 
 self-assertion, and from an extreme insistence on rights 
 which, in their time, were as undisputed as those which 
 we value so highly ; and we shall find that social codes 
 at the best have no permanent or absolute authority to 
 justify a rigid application, but can only be worked, 
 for good, by a large measure of concession and self- 
 eflfacement. And when we turn from history to what 
 we can really best judge, our own life and character, 
 it becomes apparent that hardly any degree of self- 
 discipline in this direction is exaggerated or unneces- 
 sary. We must be singularly different from the 
 common race of men, or singularly dull, if we do 
 not realize that our actions and thoughts are sroverned 
 1 Matt. V. 39-41. 
 
Lect. v.] SOCIAL QUESTIONS 103 
 
 by a jealous sense of property, a relentless insistence 
 on personal rights and personal dignity, whicli are 
 injurious alike to our own moral development, and 
 to our usefulness as members of a society. We are 
 so far from the just mean in our value for ourselves 
 and for others, that the danger of the opposite extreme 
 is, for the present, hardly worth considering. Our Lord's 
 teaching corresponds to the fact. He does but show a 
 knowledge of our nature, teaching in proverbs, short 
 absolute commands, which press the claim of the duty 
 most flagrantly neglected, to the exclusion of all else 
 for the moment, but only for the moment. He who 
 came to teach every man his duty to God, his 
 neighbour, and himself, does not forget social justice ; 
 but it is only those who have conquered pride and 
 selfishness in themselves who can safely discipline 
 others. 
 
 2. The teaching of Jesus is intensely, almost exclu- 
 sively, practical ; it touches every part of daily life, 
 and can only be fully carried out by those who are 
 living and working in the world, those for whom it 
 was intended. But for all that, Jesus was not what 
 we call a Social Reformer ; He does not give us rules 
 for dealing directly with the social problems of to-day. 
 He did not deal directly with the social and industrial 
 problems of His own time, and seems to have taken little 
 interest in them. He accepted civil Government as it 
 stood, whether Eoman or Jewish, without desire to change 
 or criticize it. The judge, the officer, the jailer, are 
 forces to be reckoned with ; and they are more than 
 
104 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. V. 
 
 that — they are the representatives of justice. He has 
 no detailed commands for us on economic questions, 
 nor, what seems stranger still to us, on Slavery. The 
 merchant, the soldier, the publican, master and servant, 
 are taken as parts of the existing system. They are 
 not separate types to Him ; each is no more and no 
 less than a human soul. Doubtless the cause of this 
 indifference is partly to be found in the conditions of 
 our Lord's human life and consciousness. Not that 
 here He simply accepted, as He so often does, the 
 opinions and beliefs of His country and generation ; 
 on the contrary, He is strikingly out of sympathy 
 with the political hopes and passions of the Jews of 
 His time. He would not be the Messiah they wanted ; 
 and His refusal inspired the spirit of submission to the 
 civil power, which was a most valuable protection to the 
 early Church. 
 
 But whatever we may think of the limits of His 
 foreknowledge, we must admit that He produced in the 
 minds of His immediate disciples a belief that the 
 World was destined speedily to pass away, and that 
 therefore the amending of its institutions was not a 
 business which demanded the thought and care of the 
 Christian. In the short time which remained before 
 the Second Coming there was other work for him to 
 do — the reformation of his own soul, the care of the 
 brethren, and the preaching of the Gospel. So much 
 we may admit ; but it does not follow that we have 
 here the whole explanation of Christ's attitude to social 
 questions. If our Lord's teaching does not anywhere 
 
Lect. v.] SOCIAL QUESTIONS 105 
 
 coincide with modern theories of social reform, it is 
 because it transcends them in either direction. It is 
 at once more universal and more particular. It is 
 more particular because it takes as its subject, as the 
 unit to be dealt with, not a nation, a class, or a trade, 
 but the single soul in its relation to God and its 
 neighbour. 
 
 "His work was to awake the individual to love 
 and to make the individual realize his responsibility 
 towards his brother ; and thus Jesus did a work which 
 beyond all others was for eternity ; and still to-day 
 He calls us back from the distracting maze of pro- 
 grammes and panaceas for the reform of the world, 
 to the reform of our own selves, which is the reform 
 which is chiefly needed." ^ 
 
 And His teaching is at the same time more universal 
 in that He does not deal with particular cases, but 
 with the Law of Character. As we read in St. Luke's 
 Gospel, " One of the company said unto Him, Master, 
 speak to my brother, that he divide the inheritance 
 with me. And He said unto him, Man, who made Me 
 a judge or a divider over you ? And He said unto 
 them. Take heed, and beware of covetousness : for a 
 man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things 
 which he possesseth." ^ 
 
 He will not deal with the particular dispute : that 
 is the business of the Magistrate ; but He gives the 
 Eule which governs all such cases, and is to guide the 
 
 ^ P. Wemle, "Beginnings of ChriBtianity," vol. i. p. 82. 
 2 Luke xii. 13-15. 
 
io6 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. V. 
 
 whole thought and action of the disciples with regard 
 to property. This is the great principle which dis- 
 tinguishes our Lord's treatment of evil from so much 
 of our attempts. He deals with evil as He deals with 
 disease ; not by treating symptoms, particular outward 
 manifestations, but by reaching and healing the root 
 of the mischief. And this is why He does not always 
 satisfy us. The disinherited brother would have been 
 better pleased if the Master had given sentence that 
 he should have half the estate, but neither he nor 
 his brother would have been better. The division of 
 the property was a small thing ; done grudgingly and 
 with resentment, it would have been a bad thing : it 
 was the spirit of generosity that mattered. 
 
 Our Lord's precepts on these difficult subjects may 
 be likened to the Laws of Health. They are broad 
 and simple and natural. But to disregard them not 
 only brings punishment and death, but makes the 
 laws themselves for the time of none effect. The 
 organism once depraved and diseased cannot return 
 to obey and profit by the simple rules that guide 
 the healthy creature, except by long and painful 
 discipline. Therefore our study of social problems is 
 to be compared to Pathology and Morbid Anatomy, 
 but with a difference. The doctor takes the diseased 
 state as his starting-point to cure it ; all his interest 
 for the moment is centred on it — its symptoms, its 
 phases, and its origin. But his whole purpose, even 
 if meanwhile he treats symptoms in order to spare 
 the patient suffering, is to remove the cause of the 
 
Lect. v.] social questions 107 
 
 distemper and restore the body to a state of health. 
 And in this the Christian social reformer imitates him, 
 and differs from all who hope to cure the disorders 
 of the State without Christianity ; by which I mean, 
 in this place, strictly the teaching of Christ. All 
 attempts at reform which are based on the acceptance 
 of Selfishness, enlightened or unenlightened, as the 
 sole motive of action, seem to me to take the cause 
 of the disease, the disease itself, as the normal and 
 permanent state, and to base their treatment on the 
 principle not of its removal, but of its continuance. 
 They propose, by a skilful treatment of symptoms, to 
 convert the poison of disease into the principle of 
 healthy life ; or, to put it in other terms, they hope 
 to educate and tame the root-spirit of strife and greed, 
 till it becomes an instrument of order and righteousness. 
 There is no hope that way. That law of Social 
 Progress is bound to lead us back in a vicious circle 
 to its starting-point — the interest of the stronger. The 
 only possible alternative to Christianity is a profound 
 and reasonable pessimism. 
 
 3. In the face of that alternative we are forced to 
 admit that, after nineteen hundred years of Christi- 
 anity, whatever may be the case with individuals, 
 Society at present is certainly not Christian ; not 
 Christian in its aims and methods, not Christian in 
 its judgments. There is no more striking instance 
 of the opposition than the value it sets upon riches 
 and poverty. We are awakening, as I have said 
 above, to the importance of the labouring classes, not 
 
io8 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. V. 
 
 only as a political power, but as our brethren, who 
 have a claim to our love and understanding ; and 
 yet I think I am not wrong in saying that we regard 
 them still as what we call them — the lower classes, 
 vessels made to dishonour in the great household of 
 the State, doing the drudgery of life for us, and fit 
 only for drudgery. Poverty is a reproach, at any 
 rate a thing evil in itself, which a man is justified in 
 stretching a point or two to escape, for himself and 
 for those who belong to him. We keep honour for 
 intellect and culture, accounting them the elements 
 which vivify the dull mass. To Christ it seemed 
 otherwise. If we may judge His mind from His 
 words and His life, the Poor, for Him, hold a very 
 difierent place in society. They represent not the 
 dull and mechanical members, but the spiritual part 
 of man's being ; while intellect and culture stand for 
 the mind and the senses ; they have a place, but it 
 is not the highest place. The highest blessing is for 
 the poor ; they are blessed as the natural heirs of 
 the Kingdom of Heaven, which is not a dim and 
 future Paradise, but the knowledge and fellowship of 
 God here and now. And we know that the Perfect 
 Life, which alone of all human lives was lived in the 
 full knowledge and fellowship of God, was a life of 
 stern poverty and hardship, of hunger and thirst: 
 the Son of Man had not where to lay His Head. 
 
 Now if we can bring ourselves to accept His value 
 of poverty and riches instead of our own, it must very 
 seriously influence both our opinions and our actions. 
 
Lect. v.] social questions 109 
 
 We shall not be tempted by a profane travesty of 
 His words, "The poor ye have always with you," to 
 let things go their way ; but the new value will never- 
 theless modify considerably our conception of true 
 philanthropic work. We shall not consider that we 
 have done all our duty by a poor man as soon as he 
 is mentally and materially equipped for making himself 
 rich; for we shall feel that he may be just as badly 
 off rich as he was poor. And if he is, then so may 
 we be. And this possibility we must gravely consider. 
 It is no mere monkish fancy that some men are called 
 to embrace a life of real poverty for their soul's sake. 
 And if our conscience does not bid us do that — for 
 there is room in the Kingdom for the rich as well as 
 the poor, though their entrance be harder — we shall 
 at least have a new and strict estimate of necessity 
 and luxury in personal expenditure, and a very scrupu- 
 lous care of the disposal of what remains over, that 
 it may do good and not harm. That is a real difficulty. 
 If the spiritual part of a man is starved and degraded, 
 it is ill with his whole being ; the intellect and the 
 senses grow at first proud and tyrannical, but in no 
 long time they too suffer, and become barren and 
 dissatisfied. But it is not well either, if the spiritual 
 part is pampered by asceticism, or drugged with super- 
 stition. And as it is with the man, so it is with the 
 State, The Eoman mob, given its food and its amuse- 
 ments without desert or effort, is not a more wholesome 
 element in Society than an East End population which, 
 by duU and exhausting toil, can earn very little food, 
 
no THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. V 
 
 and no amusement. There is a real danger in all 
 hasty and ill-considered attempts to relieve distress ; 
 the danger that while we feed the hungry and clothe 
 the naked we may rob them of honesty and self-respect. 
 But that does not mean that we are to make no effort ; 
 it means more effort — the very hard and distasteful 
 effort to understand the evils on which our comfort 
 and our prosperity are based. Have we ever considered 
 what the under-side of the social machine, which serves 
 our purpose on the whole so well, looks like to thou- 
 sands of our fellow -creatures for whom Christ died? 
 We are sometimes told that a wealthy society must 
 be based upon extreme poverty and degradation, that 
 the processes necessary to its maintenance cannot be 
 worked without a certain amount of human waste and 
 debris. It may be true. At any rate most of us 
 practically take it pretty much for granted. But 
 supposing we examine such a proposition in the light 
 of Christ's teaching ; suppose we go further and admit 
 that, in London for instance, the highest spiritual 
 potentialities lie, as He thought they lay, in the Poor ; 
 that without them the community cannot be His 
 disciples in any full sense, what answer can we make 
 either to our Master or to our accusers ? He accounted 
 the preaching of the Gospel to the poor the highest 
 part, the most notable mark of His work on earth. 
 The poor of London have been thrust, and are kept 
 by a Society which till lately called itself Christian, 
 in conditions of life which make the preaching of the 
 Gospel to them a mockery. They are practically 
 
Lect. v.] SOCIAL QUESTIONS in 
 
 denied their share ia the Fatherhood of God, which, 
 for one thing, promises to honest work enough of the 
 necessities of life. They are always anxious for the 
 morrow with too good cause. They are forced to be 
 dishonest, and impure, and cruel to one another. And 
 the one thing which could save them, the love of 
 Christ, is withheld from them, because they think it 
 is the Creed of those who oppress them. The physical 
 sufferings of the poor — cold, and hunger, and nakedness 
 — are such as may well make the comfortable classes 
 shudder to think of them ; but these are not the 
 unpardonable wrong that Society inflicts upon them, 
 for these do not separate from God : it is the moral 
 degradation, the spiritual hardening of these our 
 brethren that is the deadly evil, the burning reproach 
 to a Christian Civilization. I have spoken of London 
 as a typical and familiar example, but it is not in 
 London only, or in other great towns only, that men 
 and women are forced to live like the beasts, with- 
 out the beast's happy want of self-consciousness. 
 Things have not wholly altered in our English villages, 
 so picturesque and innocent looking, since Charles 
 Kingsley wrote in his poem, "The Poacher's Widow," 
 of the peasant — 
 
 " Worse housed than your hacks and your pointers, 
 Worse fed than your pigs and your sheep." 
 
 And then follow the lines which, as you remember, 
 Lancelot Smith would not read, and which I shall 
 not read either, for they touch the difficulty, the 
 impossibility, for English lads and girls of growing 
 
112 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. V. 
 
 up pure in mind and body in the dwellings which 
 Society considers good enough for them. 
 
 We marvel that Christ says nothing about Slavery ; 
 we are surprised, and a little scandalized, that St. Paul 
 seems to accept it among the institutions of his time 
 without protest. We rightly pride ourselves that the 
 national conscience will not tolerate such an abuse ; 
 and that there is no Slavery, or not very much, 
 under the British Flag. But what, if we look at 
 it sincerely, are the conditions of casual and under- 
 paid labour but Slavery without its safeguards ? The 
 acknowledged slave was often well treated, clothed 
 and fed, and even maintained in his old age. It 
 was the owner's interest on the whole to keep his 
 human chattels in good condition, and in good temper. 
 The free workers, slaves of penury, have not even 
 the value of a chattel ; they are absolutely dependent 
 on employers, who too often cannot afford to treat 
 them well, being themselves in bondage to the tyrant 
 Competition. They cannot leave their miserable 
 work, or if they do wander away, it is only to find 
 elsewhere conditions equally cruel and degrading ; they 
 have no claim on their masters, beyond a minimum 
 payment for tasks actually done, and when they fall, 
 weary and worn out, only destitution awaits them. 
 Even the last and vilest reproach of the slave system is 
 not done away : virtue, honour, purity, are as hard to 
 keep for thousands of free women as they were for the 
 veriest slave. 
 
 The picture is dark, but I think it is not overdrawn ; 
 
Lect. v.] SOCIAL QUESTIONS 113 
 
 and looking on it, let us pause to ask ourselves what, 
 in the face of such facts, is the duty of the State 
 and of the Individual. The individual Christian's duty- 
 is hard enough, but it is the easier of the two. We 
 can at least resolve that we will not, if we can help 
 it, take enjoyment or profit out of the degradation 
 of our fellows ; that we will know something of the 
 wants and feelings of those who minister to our ease ; 
 and then, adding love to knowledge, we may hope 
 on a small scale to do good and not harm. The task 
 of the State is infinitely puzzling and dangerous ; there 
 are such huge arrears to make up, and the evil has 
 been allowed to grow so complicated, with roots and 
 offshoots in the most unexpected places. Much may 
 be done, and cries out to be done, in the way of 
 improving material conditions, proper housing, fresh 
 air and water, and the like ; much, again, in regulating 
 trade and employment, seeing that men act honestly, 
 so far as Law, efiiciently administered, can make them. 
 But before all things, our counsellers must keep in 
 mind that no permanent reform can be effected by 
 dead lift. 
 
 It is not enough to give people subsistence, or even 
 comfort, unless we can give them back, what we have 
 robbed from them, honesty, and self-respect, and the 
 fear of God. The real question of the unemployed, for 
 instance, is not to find them wages, or to find them 
 work, but to re-create in them, what they have lost, 
 the desire to work and maintain themselves. And that, 
 I believe— and people who know a great deal more 
 
 I 
 
114 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. V. 
 
 about it than I do, believe — nothing but Christianity, 
 the love of Christ, can do for them. 
 
 4. " So I returned, and considered all the oppressions 
 tliat are done under the sun : and behold the tears of 
 such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter ; and 
 on the side of their oppressors there was power; hut 
 they had no comforter." ^ 
 
 They have no comforter. The present condition 
 of affairs is horrible for the poor ; and, rightly viewed, 
 it is equally intolerable for the rich. Even the selfish, 
 those who frankly care for no interest but their own, 
 are tormented by a sense of uneasiness and insecurity. 
 The conventions on which their power stood are 
 shaken ; the immemorial rights of property are dis- 
 puted ; they feel that the strength wherein they trusted 
 is passing from them. And the sensitive and en- 
 lightened conscience is troubled by nobler questionings. 
 There are some to-day to whom the burden of pros- 
 perity so dearly bought grows unendurable ; they 
 cannot bear to be the petted children of unequal 
 Fortune, while their brethren are outcast and dis- 
 inherited. But these finer spirits are not yet able 
 to leaven the whole lump. Most of us think in our 
 hearts that their scruples are quixotic. We are con- 
 tent with the world as we find it. And in proportion 
 to our contentment is our spiritual peril. Now, as in 
 the early days of the Church, " They that will be rich 
 fall into temptations and a snare, and into many foolish 
 and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and 
 ' Eccles. iv. 1. 
 
Lect. v.] SOCIAL QUESTIONS 115 
 
 perdition. For the love of money is the root of all 
 evil : whicli while some covet after, they err from 
 the faith, and pierce themselves through with many 
 sorrows." ^ 
 
 Christians are shockingly reckless, and shockingly 
 self-deceived about money. We prefer not to know 
 the history of the cheap merchandise we buy, or the 
 source of the good dividend ; and we dream that our 
 ignorance excuses us. We are not traders, we are not 
 directors ; their methods are no concern of ours, and 
 there can be no harm in taking what is offered. But, 
 as Dr. Liddon warns us, " There is no such thing as 
 putting personal responsibility into commission, and 
 hoping that God wUl settle accounts, not with us, 
 but with our commissioners. In this sense no man 
 may deliver his brother, or make agreement to God 
 for him." ^ 
 
 Moreover, if we as Christians are blind and reckless 
 in our choice of means for growing rich, we are also 
 amazingly inconsistent in the value we attach to the 
 end. Christ's teaching on this point is plain and 
 unmistakable. He regards wealth as unimportant, 
 except so far as it is dangerous to moral growth. In 
 no case is it a proper object for the serious pursuit of 
 a disciple. " The cares of this world, and the deceitful- 
 ness of riches, choke the word, and it becometh un- 
 fruitful." " How hardly shall they that have riches 
 enter into the Kingdom of Heaven." " Seek ye first 
 
 • 1 Tim. Yi. 9, 10. 
 
 ^ " Sermons on the Old Testament," p. 218. 
 
ti6 THE REPROACH OE THE GOSPEL [Lect. V. 
 
 the Kingdom of God, and His Righteousness, and all 
 these things shall be added unto you." " Ye cannot 
 serve God and Mammon." ^ 
 
 Our opinion, it would appear, is different — we think 
 we can serve God and Mammon ; and though we are 
 inclined on the whole to pat Mammon first, we do not 
 regard that as being in any way inconsistent with a 
 sufficient and loyal service of God. In fact, we do not 
 regard the two things as opposed, but as complementary; 
 and hence, perhaps, arises the notion, widely held and 
 simply expressed, that a bishop, of all men, must have 
 the prestige which attaches to a large income, if he is 
 to carry on his spiritual work efficiently. Our reverence 
 for great wealth would be absurd, if it were not so 
 mischievous. It is not hypocrisy, not altogether 
 snobbery, for it is pathetically genuine and disin- 
 terested, almost religious in its character. Men admire 
 and court a very wealthy person, irrespective of any 
 advantage they may hope to gain from him : exactly 
 as we read in the old days men admired a lord. A 
 new aristocracy of wealth has taken the place of the 
 aristocracy of birth and rank, and has even succeeded 
 to a practical enjoyment of some of its privileges. 
 And the reason surely is, apart from a natural tendency 
 to worship what is big and strong and successful, that 
 these men possess a large quantity of what all men 
 covet as the chief good of life. In former times men 
 desired, above all things, power and consideration, and 
 they envied and respected those who could command 
 ' Matt. xiii. 22 ; Mark x. 23 ; Matt. vi. 33, 24. 
 
Lect. v.] SOCIAL QUESTIONS 117 
 
 them ; to-day we desire chiefly comfort verging on 
 luxury. We are rather inclined, too, to make a sort 
 of virtue of our desire and its attainment. One hears 
 it said, with some complacency, that the standard of 
 comfort has risen wonderfully throughout the country 
 in the last fifty years. God knows it might safely 
 rise still more for some hundreds of thousands of our 
 countrymen. But, without reference to Christian prin- 
 ciples, it may be questioned, whether making the 
 comfortable classes more comfortable is altogether a 
 gain ; and does not rather lead to what R. L. Stevenson 
 calls a fatty degeneration of the whole moral nature. 
 We may fear that the well-to-do classes in this country 
 have already reached a degree of luxury which begins 
 to slacken the will and dull the intelligence. We 
 demand, and get, many things which our grandfathers 
 did without ; but are we the better for it ? The ap- 
 pliances, which are supposed to make life easier, are 
 becoming a nuisance and a burden to many of us ; 
 and, at best, they cost time and thought and money, 
 which could be better bestowed, and so defeat their 
 purpose, adding to the strain of life which they are 
 intended to relieve. The modern craving for comfort 
 is certainly a baser thing than the mediaeval love of 
 magnificence, and it has left its mark on our art and 
 our literature. The men of those days had the genius 
 to build splendidly, and the conviction to destroy 
 without remorse the work of their predecessors. The 
 note of our time is an extraordinarily high level of 
 technical skill with no touch of inspiration. We try 
 
ii8 THE REPROACH OP THE GOSPEL [Lect. V. 
 
 to make up for our lack of originality by an almost 
 superstitious reverence for the achievements of the 
 past, which is amply justified by our failure to match 
 them, but is an unerring sign of a decadent civiliza- 
 tion. The failure to produce great works of art, 
 original and characteristic of our own age, is partly 
 due, no doubt, to the fact that many able minds are 
 occupied in making life smoother, instead of making 
 it nobler and more beautiful ; but it is also true that 
 soft living does not fit men either to create or to 
 appreciate masterpieces. It is well if it has not tainted 
 deeper springs of the national character than intellect 
 and sense. 
 
 5. So far I have spoken of the secular aspect of this 
 tendency in modern life. What of its religious aspect ? 
 How can we call ourselves Christians, when we are so 
 far from obeying the Apostolic injunction, that having 
 food and raiment, we should be content therewith ; 
 when we care so much about money, soft lying, and 
 delicate eating and drinking ? It is something to have 
 been forced to ask ourselves this question — everything, 
 if we are quite honest ; for there is in truth but one 
 clear answer. But in practice we ofier many answers, 
 which seem to let us keep what we like so well, and 
 yet satisfy our conscience. 
 
 So much has been said and written about social 
 evils, that most of us are a little uneasy about the 
 inequalities of the system in which we happen to 
 occupy a fairly prosperous place. We are shocked, 
 perhaps, by some particularly lurid revelation, and 
 
Lect. v.] social questions 119 
 
 our first instinct is to write a cheque for as much as 
 we can conveniently spare, or even a little more. We 
 may be so deeply impressed that we resolve to subscribe 
 regularly to some charitable object which we under- 
 stand is excellent ; and feel that now we are doing 
 our duty to our neighbour. But it will not serve. 
 This is not Charity, it is ransom — the blackmail which 
 our sins levy on our desire to feel virtuous. It is as 
 bad as giving a shilling to a tramp because we are 
 a little afraid of him, or tired of listening to his whine. 
 However, we are getting educated past that stage. 
 We have learned that it is wicked to give a shilling 
 to a tramp, because it does not help him, but keeps 
 him down, by encouraging him to continue in ruffianism 
 and lying, instead of taking to honest work. That 
 is true, but it is only a half truth. We cannot let 
 people starve while we take a broad and comprehensive 
 view of their cases. What we have to do is to keep 
 the tramp alive till we find out why he is a tramp, 
 and whether he can be cured ; and more hopefully 
 inquire how we can prevent his children and other 
 children from becoming tramps. And here, too, we 
 cannot wholly delegate our responsibility, or put it 
 into commission. Charity Organization is a necessary 
 thing and an admirable thing ; but it is not infallible, 
 and is sometimes cruel in its working; and, like all 
 things official, is apt to grow tyrannous, if it is not 
 well looked after by lay people. It is therefore our 
 duty to get knowledge for ourselves, and to act on 
 it with sense and prudence, but without compromise. 
 
120 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. V. 
 
 We are tempted to try a via media. We object to 
 almsgiving, and rightly, in so far as the relief it gives 
 is only temporary, and its results, if we do no more 
 than give alms, permanently mischievous. But we 
 have not the courage and sincerity to surrender and 
 abolish what makes almsgiving a necessity and a curse. 
 The reason why we dare not obey literally our Lord's 
 command to give, is that we let our duty to our 
 neighbour begin and end with the gift. We do not 
 face the moral law, which gives virtue to the act. 
 When Christ restored power to the limbs of the 
 paralyzed man, He was not content with the gift of 
 physical health, but gave him guidance and motive to 
 use his new strength rightly. " Behold thou art made 
 whole. Sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee." ' 
 
 We have no right for their sake, or for our own, 
 to preach contentment to the poor, or bribe them into 
 acquiescence, until we have given them the elementary 
 justice of an equal opportunity of living the life which 
 God intended for them. 
 
 " The principle of justice," says a great preacher 
 who has often pleaded for righteousness from this place, 
 "is one which is not approximately realized in what 
 we call Christian society at present. It is compara- 
 tively few men who have a real opportunity of work 
 and remuneration according to their faculties, of spiritual 
 knowledge, of legitimate education, physical and moral. "^ 
 
 ■■ John V. 14. 
 
 '^ Dr. Gore, " The Social Doctrine of the Sermon on the Mount," 
 p. 22. 
 
Lect. v.] SOCIAL QUESTIONS 121 
 
 Until that is secured, until the principle of justice 
 is acknowledged and acted on, all philanthropic effort 
 which teaches contentment, which aims chiefly at the 
 maintenance of the established Social Order, and has 
 not for its purpose a permanent moral improvement, 
 is a wrong to the poor, and a specious anodyne for the 
 consciences of the rich. It is such Philanthropy as 
 this which our Lord pictures as sending men with 
 fatal self-confidence to face the Judgment. "Many 
 will say unto me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we 
 not prophesied in Thy Name, and in Thy Name cast 
 out devUs, and in Thy Name done many wonderful 
 works? And then will I profess unto them, I never 
 knew you : depart from Me, ye that work iniquity." ^ 
 
 ' Matt. vii. 22, 23. 
 
LECTURE YI 
 
 AJSTAECHY NOT THE CUEE 
 
 ^avepov OTi tS>v <j>v(T€i fj ttoXis ecTt', Kai on avOponro'; <j>v(TU ttoXitikov 
 ^oiov, Ktti 6 airoXis Sta t^vatv koX ov Sta tv^tjv ^toc i^aCAds icrriv 7] KpeiTT<j>v 
 r) avOpKiyiro^. — ArISTOTLE. 
 
LECTURE VI 
 
 ANARCHY NOT THE CURE 
 
 "And He saith unto them, Whose is this image and super- 
 soription? They say unto Him, Caesar's. Then saith He unto 
 them. Bender therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's ; 
 and unto God the things that are God's." — Matt. xxii. 20, 21. 
 
 1. The hope and purpose of Liberal Theology have been, 
 and are more than ever to-day, to make Christianity 
 a possible Religion for the intelligent man of the world. 
 It makes its appeal to common sense by submitting 
 the dogmatic and historical tenets of the Churches 
 without reserve to the tests of critical investigation ; 
 and ultimately by presenting Christianity not as a 
 Creed, but as a Life, and faith as the result, not of 
 an intellectual surrender which is felt to be repug- 
 nant to sincerity, but of the normal intellectual processes 
 which apply in the sphere of practice and secular 
 knowledge. In the first stage of its endeavour it has 
 been to a great extent successful. Whatever may be 
 our opinion of Liberal Theology, we must at least 
 admit that its methods and results have compelled 
 the educated intelligence of Europe to reconsider most 
 seriously the truth and importance of that which, 
 seventy years ago, it was preparing to dismiss as 
 
126 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. VI. 
 
 unworthy of consideration. But in its further purpose, 
 of facilitating the wide acceptance of Christianity, it 
 has largely and unexpectedly failed. In clearing away, 
 rightly or wrongly, the intellectual difficulties, it has 
 brought men face to face with the real and fundamental 
 contradiction between Christianity and the world, which 
 is the Ethical. The average honest man does not find 
 things made easier for him at all ; he heartily wishes 
 himself back in the quiet times when Christianity 
 meant going to church and asking no questions, instead 
 of obedience to principles entirely opposed to those 
 which he sees governing the thoughts and actions of 
 the society in which he is an active member. This 
 contradiction presents an insurmountable obstacle to 
 very many whom intellectual difficulties would not 
 have much disturbed. Sensible men commonly allow 
 themselves to be guided by authority in matters beyond 
 the range of their personal knowledge and experience ; 
 but in the practical world they feel that they are 
 qualified and obliged to judge. And the result is that 
 they decline to make public profession of a creed which 
 they see no prospect, and indeed have no intention of 
 carrying out in their lives. Their conclusion may 
 not be right, but it is quite intelligible and logical. 
 They will not allow their instinctive honesty to be 
 sophisticated by arguments which interpret the duty 
 of obeying the spirit, and not the letter, of Christ's 
 precepts as a justification for not obeying them at all ; 
 and which find in the dominant ethic of each succeed- 
 ing age a legitimate development of the principles of 
 
Lect. VI.] ANARCHY NOT THE CURE 127 
 
 Christianity. But while we regret the loss of such men 
 to the Church, we must acknowledge that we are deeply 
 indebted to their sincerity for defining the issue so 
 sharply, and thrusting the question upon Christians 
 in a form which forbids either delay or ambiguity in 
 answering. They express, in the most unmistakable 
 manner, their conviction that the man of business and 
 the man of politics have nothing to do with Christi- 
 anity under present conditions. Is the converse true ? 
 Can the Christian under present conditions have any- 
 thing to do with business and politics ? If the social 
 order is so radically corrupt that it is the mere expression 
 of the spirit of selfishness which is the antithesis of 
 the Christian spirit, can we accept the responsibility 
 of helping to maintain it, or off'er it anything but that 
 passive submission which is the most powerful solvent 
 of institutions ? Is the duty of the Christian and the 
 remedy for the evils of the world to be found in 
 Anarchy 1 
 
 Anarchy is an ugly word ; it is associated in our 
 minds with aimless, indiscriminate murders ; but for 
 the present let us separate it from its accidents, 
 and take it in its plain meaning — a dislike for all 
 government of man by man, a disbelief in all external 
 coercion as a means for good. The spirit of it is 
 already at work in more subtle and efiective ways 
 than insensate violence. We are attracted or shocked 
 by it in the works of certain modern writers, where 
 it takes the form of a blank and hopeless pessimism, 
 which despairs of civilization present and future. The 
 
128 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. VI. 
 
 whole structure of Society is, for them, a monstrous 
 creation of human folly and wickedness, rendered only 
 more abominable and more dangerous by the supersti- 
 tion that it benefits and protects its victims. Law 
 is chicanery and cruelty organized, tormenting and 
 slaying with sanctimonious formalities. Custom is 
 the dead hand of bygone foolishness and insincerity, 
 keeping its grasp on new generations, which themselves 
 do not lack a plentiful supply of these vices. Public 
 opinion is the clamour of fools, cajoled and excited 
 by rogues for their own ends. Nor is there hope for 
 the future. These melancholy philosophers do not 
 even desire to amend the wrongs they perceive so 
 clearly. In their prudence they would rather keep 
 the ills they have than fly to others that they know 
 not of They hold that revolution is a chimaera, a 
 change to some new false and cruel system. In their 
 eyes the Tyrant and the Eeformer, the Criminal and 
 the Saint, are equally tragic and absurd figures. They 
 only ask to be let alone, and console themselves with 
 the thought that Government and other organized 
 interferences with the individual are not as strong 
 and as infallible as their admirers imagine. 
 
 Now I think I need not labour an argument to 
 prove that such anarchy as this can have nothing in 
 common with Christian thought. Any pessimism must 
 be as the poles removed from Christianity, which is 
 nothing if it is not a Hope. But there is another kind 
 of Anarchy, far more cheerful and practical, with which 
 we are familiar. It does not sit in the study and distil 
 
Lect. VI.] ANARCHY NOT THE CURE 129 
 
 its despair into well-balanced periods ; it goes abroad 
 upon the streets to enjoy itself. It thinks well of the 
 world and its prospects, and is instinct with a heady 
 optimism, the chUd rather of impulse than experience. 
 True, it has its quarrels, too, with law and custom and 
 public opinion : finds convention an irksome garment ; 
 but it believes that a healthy and robust nature can 
 dispense with these old catchwords, and do very well 
 for itself and for Society. Its simple philosophy is 
 summed up in the maxim, " Love your neighbour, and 
 do what you like yourself." 
 
 The words give us pause, for indeed these precepts 
 of a genial self-indulgence sound curiously like a 
 summary of the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount. 
 The difiierence lies in the emphasis ; but it is a world- 
 wide difference. If the two clauses are enunciated 
 as parallel and of equal authority, there is a proba- 
 bility, amounting to a certainty, that the second will 
 encroach upon the first till it has ousted it wherever 
 the two seem to conflict ; or self-love, grown tyrannous 
 and diseased, will infect love for one's neighbour, 
 
 " like a cankered ear, 
 Blasting his wholesome brother," 
 
 till love itself is turned to something more foul and 
 deadly than hatred. The end of this philosophy of 
 conduct is seen in ruined and wasted lives, spreading 
 ruin and waste around them, and themselves tormented 
 in an Inferno of shattered hopes and satisfied desires. 
 Christ gives us His counsel in the same words, but 
 
 K 
 
I30 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. VI. 
 
 He makes tlie second clause, the permission, dependent 
 and conditional on the fulfilment of the first, the 
 command. It is only when we have fully learned 
 to love our neighbour as ourselves, with all the wisdom 
 it implies, that we can safely do what we like ourselves. 
 That is the perfect law of liberty, of anarchy if you 
 will, but the glorious and innocent anarchy which is 
 the Kingdom of God. And the subordination is not 
 possible without Christ. Even so, even for Christians, 
 it is not a present fact, but a still distant end towards 
 which we are working, and let us say it with all 
 reverence, He is working in us. We cannot pretend 
 that His Kingdom has come in that sense. We may 
 be truly heirs of the Kingdom, but " The heir, so long 
 as he is a child, difi'ereth nothing from a servant, 
 though he be lord of all ; but is under tutors and 
 governors until the time appointed of the father." ' 
 
 A thousand years see the rise and fall of many 
 generations, yet they are but a short period in the 
 history of the Eace ; and on the most flattering 
 estimate of progress the most we can claim for 
 Humanity in Science and Morals is that it is emerging 
 from a troublesome childhood into a somewhat petulant 
 youth. Discipline may be changed and modified to 
 suit with growth, but it cannot safely be relaxed. We 
 still need the help and guidance of external coercion, 
 because the rules and limitations which seem to hamper 
 free achievement are really what make any achieve- 
 ment possible for most of us. It is easier to make 
 ' Gal. iv. 1, 2. 
 
Lect. VI.] ANARCHY NOT THE CURE 131 
 
 a passable sonnet than to write good rhythmical prose, 
 because the rules of the Sonnet are definite and un- 
 yielding. A stern and narrow discipline best moulds 
 and tempers our intellectual and artistic faculties for 
 their highest activity ; and the like is true of our 
 spiritual faculties. We cannot afford to allow anarchy 
 in ourselves or others, if for no other reason, because 
 it asks too much of human nature. It assumes that 
 men are naturally kind, and wise, and loyal, whereas 
 all experience goes to show that they are the reverse ; 
 and the reformer who acts on the belief that men are, 
 to start with, all that he would have them to be, 
 prepares for himself disappointment. 
 
 The opinion that the unchecked and unguided 
 impulses of humanity would not tend to right action, 
 is not based solely on a belief on the Christian doctrine 
 of Original Sin, but is strongly confirmed by the 
 teachings of Science. Evolution in its earliest stages 
 may be regarded as the result of the free interaction 
 of natural forces ; but from another point of view, 
 it is not less truly the result of interference with these 
 forces. The difierentiated organism justifies itself by 
 defeating the natural law which destroys its more 
 conservative brethren. And as soon as conscious intel- 
 ligence comes into play, this interference appears as the 
 determining factor in all higher progress. All cultiva- 
 tion of plants and animals, with a view to what we 
 consider valuable qualities, is an unending conflict with 
 the natural tendency of reversion to type. The culti- 
 vated fruit tree is not, and never could be, the result of 
 
132 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. VI. 
 
 uninterrupted and unaided development ; its excellence 
 is the work of man's hand, and it depends on man 
 for protection. Unaided it cannot stand against its 
 uncultivated kindred ; for nature loves her wildings, 
 and the lower forms are the more reproductive. So 
 simple and natural a thing as a grass lawn must be 
 jealously guarded and disciplined if it is to keep its 
 virtue of uniform colour and texture. The sluggard 
 in Dr. Watts's poem left his garden to the free play 
 of natural forces, and we read that the wild briar, the 
 thorn, and the thistle rose highest in that vegetable 
 commonwealth. We cannot tolerate the struggle for 
 life in our gardens ; much less shall we endure it, if we 
 are wise, in our state, or in our soul. 
 
 I observe that, in this general discussion of anarchy, 
 I may be accused of resorting to a common device of 
 the preacher, setting up an imaginary opponent con- 
 veniently accoutred for my attack, and arguing against 
 a position which no one really holds. In secular 
 government and society, I admit, the adoption of 
 anarchic principles is not seriously contemplated by 
 any one who need be considered ; the ruling tendency 
 is rather the other way. But in Religion there is 
 a marked movement towards extreme individualism, 
 which is anarchic in its exaggerated dislike of Churches, 
 and of all external aids to a devout life and right con- 
 duct, and in a higher estimate of the spiritual capacities 
 of the individual than is warranted by experience. 
 
 2. However, it is time to return to the more par- 
 ticular question of the right attitude of the Christian, 
 
Lect. VI.] ANARCHY NOT THE CURE 133 
 
 not to an ideal Society, but to Society as it actually 
 exists ; and his relation to the present form of these 
 religious societies which we call the Churches. 
 
 Let us, then, first consider the secular side, political, 
 social, and commercial life as we see it about us, from 
 day to day. After what I have said in my last Lecture, 
 it would be impossible for me to maintain that the 
 Christian is at liberty to adopt its principles and practices 
 without reserve. There are plainly certain classes of 
 business which he must not touch at all, either directly 
 as a principal, or indirectly as a shareholder ; and in 
 other enterprises, though the end is lawful, methods 
 are commonly employed such as the Christian is for- 
 bidden to profit by, or to allow, if he can prevent 
 them. In these matters every man must be guided 
 by his conscience, with due consideration for the weaker 
 brother. The danger hitherto is rather on the side 
 of laxity than of puritanism. So in national and 
 municipal politics the Christian is clearly precluded 
 from using, to secure his ends, many weapons both 
 popular and efi"ective. He must abstain from all 
 violence and undue influence. He must not abuse 
 or misrepresent his opponent's proposals, or his personal 
 character. Furthermore, cases might arise in which 
 it would be his duty to resist an unjust law even 
 to the spoiling of his goods; but he is bound to be 
 very certain that his motive in such resistance is 
 principle, and not merely dislike of a particular enact- 
 ment ; and it is difficult in a free country, with 
 representative institutions, to imagine circumstances 
 
134 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. VI. 
 
 which justify a course of action so extreme and 
 anarchic. 
 
 However, the definitely forbidden ground is small 
 compared with the wide extent of neutral territory, 
 in which also we must be governed by our Lord's 
 precept and example. It would be idle to look for 
 exact guidance in details from His life, or from the 
 practice of the early Church ; for the conditions have 
 entirely changed. Jesus was, according to the Flesh, 
 a Syrian peasant under the early Empire ; and He 
 accepted fully the limitations of the life He had chosen, 
 lie did not use political power, because He did not 
 possess it. The first Christians, regarded officially as 
 a sect of the Jews, were equally powerless on that 
 side. They had before them very many years of 
 obscure and patient work, leavening the mass of the 
 World through the individual conscience, before they 
 were in a position to employ the machinery of State, or 
 even public opinion beyond a narrow and despised circle. 
 
 Our circumstances are strikingly difi'erent. Whether 
 we like it or not, we have political power, and the 
 responsibility which power carries with it ; and we 
 have, as Christians, the further responsibility of pos- 
 sessing what is still regarded, and increasinglyiregarded, 
 as the highest ethical standard. The conditions are so 
 completely altered that here, if anywhere, we are 
 obliged to obey Christ's teaching in the spirit, and 
 not in the letter. I shall therefore not think it 
 necessary to dwell upon the precise attitude of our 
 Lord, or of His immediate followers towards the Eoman 
 
Lect. VI.] ANARCHY NOT THE CURE 135 
 
 or Jewish Government of their day ; for I think the 
 more useful course is to acknowledge frankly that He 
 regarded social and political institutions as indifferent, 
 aSidijiopa ; and to consider exactly what He meant by 
 dSw£(j6o/)ov. 
 
 The study of Church History shows that in spite 
 of repeated and explicit repudiations of dualistic 
 theories, Christian thought has steadily tended to a 
 Manichaean view of dSiat^opa, including the material 
 Universe, as somehow evil, or at any rate not belonging 
 to God. This view leads to two very opposite con- 
 clusions in practice, the puritan and the antinomian. 
 The second, which argues that the believer can safely 
 use or abuse all things indifferent as he pleases, without 
 injury or stain to the higher part of his being, has 
 emerged from time to time in Christian communities 
 with startling results ; but it is generally rejected by 
 the common sense and common morality of mankind. 
 The puritan conclusion, " Touch not, taste not, handle 
 not," has laid and keeps a firm grip on serious minds 
 and tender consciences. Abstinence is a valuable 
 discipline, and would probably be best for us in more 
 things than we care to admit ; but we must bear in 
 mind that the ascetic ideal is not the highest, nor is it 
 Christ's. The Son of Man came eating and drinking, 
 to show us that man's body and its pleasures belong to 
 God, and that a natural and temperate enjoyment of 
 them is part of the service we owe to God. Much 
 more, then, does He require of men the full use of their 
 powers of mind, and of their distinctive power of 
 
136 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. VI. 
 
 concerted and continuous action for the common good. 
 Christ's rule for us in social and political matters may 
 best be gathered from such passages as the Parable 
 of the Talents, where He uses, to enforce His teaching, 
 the figure of the other great aStd^opov, Money. The 
 lesson is made the more striking when we consider that 
 the servants who are praised and rewarded not only 
 used the talent entrusted to them, but risked something 
 in its profitable employment. They are commended 
 for courage and energy, as well as for industry. It is 
 to be observed that we do not find in the canonical 
 versions of the story the profligate servant of the 
 Gospel of the Hebrews, who wasted his Lord's money 
 in riotous living. It is the pattern of negative virtues, 
 the scrupulous and careful servant, who wrapped his 
 talent in a napkin and kept it quite safe, that is 
 punished for being wicked and slothful. The apocryphal 
 addition gives a satisfactory literary balance to the 
 story, but it spoils the moral. The type that our Lord 
 censures in this Parable is not the violent and reckless 
 criminal, but the character which is languid and in- 
 different in using any faculty it possesses, political 
 power as much as another. The citizen who fails to 
 exercise his rights, either from scruple or from mere 
 idleness, is a more dangerous anarchist than the man 
 of the dagger and the bomb. He wrongs himself 
 by leaving his opinion unrepresented ; he wrongs the 
 State by refusing a factor in the result on which 
 its counsels depend ; and he also wrongs his Religion, 
 when he declines to support the cause of justice by 
 
Lect. VI.] ANARCHY NOT THE CURE i37 
 
 obvious and legitimate means, and so encourages the 
 idea that Religion has no place in practical affairs. It 
 is a plain duty for the Christian to study questions 
 of imperial and local policy, and to employ all lawful 
 means, influence as well as vote, to secure their right 
 settlement. On the other hand, he will not be content 
 with securing good legislation, or any other external 
 machinery for improvement ; he will not ascribe to 
 Acts of Parliament any magical power to change the 
 thoughts of men's hearts ; for he will understand that 
 they are only important as the record of thought ; 
 it is the spirit, not the institution, that counts. 
 Accordingly, he will not be a fanatical believer in 
 the virtue of any particular form of government. The 
 tide sets just now in the direction of Democracy. We 
 are all, and, I think, not wrongly, inclined to see 
 in it the proper and congenial environment for the 
 working of the Spirit of Christ. But there is no 
 reason in the nature of things, why an absolute 
 monarchy, or an oligarchy, should not be administered 
 on Christian principles. Christianity, with all its 
 failures, has made so deep an impression, that all 
 forms of Government claim a sort of divine right, 
 maintaining, in theory at least, that their purpose, and 
 the reason of their being, is to cherish and enforce 
 righteousness ; so that any one of them, if it could 
 be kept to the level of its professed standard, might be, 
 under whatever name, a Christian Government. 
 
 Meanwhile, we in England have free and representa- 
 tive institutions, under which we are called upon to 
 
138 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. VI. 
 
 choose our leaders, and to give our judgment on great 
 measures and small. It is a form of government in 
 whicli most responsibility rests on the individual citizen, 
 and certainly not among the least favourable for the 
 development of the spirit of Christianity. And in 
 truth we may venture to say that our legislation is 
 increasingly Christian in spirit ; it is growing more 
 just, more merciful, more considerate towards the weak 
 and the suffering and the sinful. It is our business 
 to see that this progress shall be steady and uninter- 
 rupted. Laws, as I have said, are significant only as 
 the record of thought ; and it is the popular will alone 
 that can enforce them when they are enacted. Public 
 opinion is stronger than Law. Now Christian opinion 
 is too often silent, or speaks with a weak and uncertain 
 voice, because Christians are divided, and are much 
 occupied with their differences ; or, again, because they 
 are reticent and afraid to declare themselves openly ; 
 or because they think their Eeligion is concerned with 
 their own personal salvation, and not with the material 
 and moral welfare of all men. We hesitate and com- 
 promise because we lack faith, and dare not know our 
 own strength by putting it to the test ; and therefore 
 the world goes forward without us and the Christianity 
 we represent, though not altogether, as we must believe, 
 without God. But if we count it our duty to help 
 in doing God's work, and desire the politics and the 
 business of our country to be honest and wholesome, 
 we must not let them alone while we try to save our 
 own souls; we must create a strong, united, articulate 
 
Lect. VI.] ANARCHY NOT THE CURE 139 
 
 Christian opinion, whose authority is based on the 
 example of Christian lives. 
 
 3. There remains, however, the important and 
 highly controversial question of the Church — the 
 question whether it is necessary or expedient for the 
 maintenance of true Religion to have a Society which 
 interprets Divine Truth authoritatively in Creeds, pre- 
 scribes ritual and ceremony for public worship, and 
 exercises discipline ; a Society, therefore, which is 
 exclusive, in the sense that it refuses to recognize as 
 members those who will not accept its beliefs or obey 
 its rules. This is a question which it is difficult to 
 approach without prejudice on one side or the other. 
 I do not mean for opponents of Christianity only, 
 but for earnest and sincere Christians of different 
 schools of thought and different temperaments. Some 
 Christians, influenced partly by early training and 
 association, but also convinced by actual spiritual 
 experience, regard the Church, both in its doctrinal 
 and its ceremonial aspects, as the appointed means 
 of Grace, which has brought them to a knowledge of 
 God. For others, the Church is an imposture, or at 
 best a compromise with the spirit of the World ; in 
 their judgment Ecclesiasticism, Sacerdotalism, is the 
 enemy which has withheld or depraved the Truth as 
 it is in Jesus almost from the first. Men, they say, in 
 all ages have come to Christ and been saved by Him, 
 not through the Church, but in spite of the Church. 
 
 Confronted with this astonishing conflict of opinion, 
 the Christian naturally appeals to the authority of 
 
I40 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. VI. 
 
 the Master. But wlien we inquire whether Jesus 
 contemplated the founding of what we mean by a 
 Christian Church, we must honestly admit that there 
 is nothing to prove it in His extant discourses ; nor 
 are we called upon to believe that after His resurrection 
 He revealed to His apostles, in discourses which have 
 not been handed down to us, the details of the organi- 
 zation by which the Gospel was to be spread and 
 maintained in the world. He appears to have been 
 content with the Jewish Church, in which He was 
 born, as a framework for Spiritual Eeligion. The 
 author of the conception of the Church, as we know 
 it, was, humanly speaking, not Jesus but Paul. Yet 
 to admit this does not surrender the Church's claim 
 to be a divine ordinance, for St. Paul was guided, as 
 we hope to be guided, by the promised Spirit of Truth. 
 He was not merely self-confident and deluded, when 
 he thought he had the Mind of Christ. It was his 
 task to obey the Lord's command in carrying His 
 Gospel to the Gentiles ; and in the new conditions 
 he saw that the forms of Judaism, which might lead 
 a sincere Jew straight to the Kingdom, were a snare 
 and a hindrance to the Gentile convert ; but he found 
 also, what all Evangelists find, whether among the 
 untried heathen or the lapsed masses who once were 
 Christian, that if you are to call men, if you are to 
 compel them to come in, you must have something for 
 them to come in to, a visible Society where admission is 
 not indeed Salvation, but the first step on the way of 
 Salvation, and a Belief to inspire and guide them. 
 
Lect. VI.] ANARCHY NOT THE CURE 141 
 
 The germ of the Christian Creeds is to be found 
 
 in the Words of our Lord. As His ministry drew 
 
 to its close, and the certainty of His approaching 
 
 Passion and Death became very vivid in His own 
 
 Mind, and was repeatedly impressed by Him on the 
 
 unwilling minds of His disciples. He asks of them as 
 
 a test of their discipleship that they should confess 
 
 Him before men, and thereby enrol themselves in the 
 
 fellowship of those who are ready to suffer with Jesus. 
 
 " Now that danger approaches, confession is necessary, 
 
 that the Cause should not perish with the Person." ' 
 
 The earlier moral teaching is not abrogated, or replaced 
 
 by the Confession of Faith ; but it is made clear that 
 
 the way of Salvation is the way of those who confess 
 
 Jesus. He is the Way. The Prayer of Jesus in the 
 
 seventeenth chapter of St. John gives a new emphasis 
 
 to the same thought, and throws light upon its inner 
 
 meaning. " I have given unto them the words which 
 
 Thou gavest Me : and they have received them, and 
 
 have known surely that I came out from Thee, and 
 
 have believed that Thou didst send Me. I pray for 
 
 them : I pray not for the world, but for them which 
 
 Thou hast given Me ; for they are Thine. . . . Neither 
 
 pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall 
 
 believe on Me through their word." ^ 
 
 Doubtless this Belief, this Confession, was asked 
 and given in a very different spirit from the cold 
 intellectual assent which has satisfied the orthodoxy 
 
 ^ See P. Wernle, " Beginnings of Christianity," vol. i. pp. 86, 87. 
 2 John xvii. 8, 9, 20. 
 
142 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. VI. 
 
 of later ages ; and men and women and Churclies are 
 nearer to Christ in proportion as they share the first 
 spirit and not the second. Yet the principle is estab- 
 lished once for all, by our Lord Himself, that Belief 
 in the Person and Work of Christ is the life of the 
 Christian, the essence of Christianity. 
 
 It will, however, very naturally be objected that, 
 if this be granted, it leaves us far short even of the 
 simplest version of the Apostles' Creed. There are 
 many people who say to us, " If that were all — if the 
 message of the Churches were the message of St. Paul 
 to the gaoler at Philippi, ' Believe on the Lord Jesus 
 Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thine house ' — 
 we could receive that ; it is the superstructure that 
 puzzles and oifends us." And they have right in 
 their complaint. In the deepest and truest sense that 
 is all — all that any man needs, all that any Church 
 has a right to ask. And yet to cavil at the Creeds 
 in their extended form, often shows a wilful or ignorant 
 disregard of the history of their making. They are 
 treated as arbitrary and fantastic additions to the 
 simple truths of the Gospel ; whereas nearly every 
 article in our Creeds is a protest and a safeguard 
 against arbitrary and fantastic additions. So long as 
 Christianity was taught by eye-witnesses to the simple 
 and ignorant, the simplest and broadest form of words 
 sufficed. But soon learning and intellect claimed their 
 right in the treasure ; and imagination ran riot, bewil- 
 dered by the glories of an authentic Theophany. One 
 heresy after another sprang up ; and the Church 
 
Lect. VI.] ANARCHY NOT THE CURE 143 
 
 was forced to declare and define, and to curb the 
 extravagances of the human mind with its own 
 weapons 
 
 Now if the Creeds had only this negative function, 
 they would be indispensable ; as the heresies, which 
 they arose to combat, recur in new aspects and under 
 new names. But they have also a positive value for 
 us ; they tell us what it concerns us to believe, as 
 well as what it concerns us to deny ; and by happy 
 chance, or Divine Providence, the making of Creeds 
 fell upon a time singularly favourable for such attempts. 
 If we have not in the Nicene Theology the absolute 
 expression of Divine Truth, we have the projection 
 of Divine Truth on Greek Philosophy, the strongest 
 and most delicate fabric ever wrought by human 
 intelligence and human speech. I know that this fact 
 appears to some people a sufficient reason in itself for 
 discarding or restating the Creeds, on the ground that 
 the forms in which they are expressed are obsolete 
 and unintelligible. It does not seem so to me. Greek 
 thought is not dead ; it lives as the common element 
 in the daily thought and speech of all civilized Western 
 Kaces ; and, therefore, apart from the practical diffi- 
 culties of restatement, it is the most fitting vehicle 
 for the common Creed. None the less, if Christianity 
 is to vindicate its just claims on the intellect, it is 
 necessary that some of the best minds of every 
 generation should be steadily and fearlessly at work 
 on the problems of the Nature of God and His 
 relation to Man. It is not the philosophical but the 
 
144 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. VI. 
 
 materialistic treatment of Theology that piles up new 
 dogmas. 
 
 4. Ceremony and Eitual are so much and so hotly 
 debated, that I should be unwilling to speak of them, 
 and so add my handful to the dust of the conflict, 
 were it not that they are an essential part of the life 
 of an organized Church. Man is a creature of sense 
 as well as intellect; and while the mind properly 
 demands a reasonable account of the ground of faith, 
 the senses, too, cannot safely be refused their share 
 in the worship of the Creator. The recognition of this 
 fact is one among the causes of the notable success of 
 " High " Churches in poor town districts. A beautiful 
 church and beautiful ordered services are an entirely 
 legitimate and truly effective means of stimulating 
 and expressing devotion which will bear fruit in good 
 works. And the historic ritual of a great Church 
 not only brings the worshipper near to God, but joins 
 him in prayer and praise with his brethren in all lands 
 and in all ages ; and becomes the symbol of that 
 Communion of Saints which is the essence of Christi- 
 anity between man and man. Our thoughts naturally 
 turn to the central act of Christian Worship, that Rite 
 which I think all Christians hold to have been ordained 
 by Christ Himself, and which we believe to be necessary, 
 salva Dei omnipotentia, for the full Christian life. 
 Such a belief, one might think, would secure for it 
 glad and frequent observance, and lift it above the 
 strife of tongues. We, praeposter: homines, relegate 
 it in practice to a second or third place in our worship. 
 
Lect. VI.] ANARCHY NOT THE CURE 145 
 
 while we debate its accessories with untiring zeal and 
 acrimony. Now whatever view we may hold of Sacra- 
 mental doctrine, we are all agreed in the last resort 
 that the thing symbolized, the right attitude to God 
 and Man, is important, and that all externals only 
 have value as means to this end, and are in themselves 
 indifferent. And this, the unimportance of externals, 
 is the true reason why it is supremely desirable to 
 have uniformity in ceremonial, that it may be used 
 almost unconsciously for edification, and not be made 
 matter of controversy. Difference leads to discussion, 
 and discussion tends almost inevitably to give an 
 intrinsic importance to its subjects. We have a 
 melancholy object-lesson in ceremonial disorder and 
 its results in the Church of England. One can hardly 
 be present at a service, especially at the Service, for 
 the first time in a church where one is a stranger, 
 without an unwilling curiosity as to the exact shade 
 of "Ritual" adopted there; and it mars, though it 
 cannot destroy, the devotional value of our worship. 
 The Church of England needs many things, but it 
 needs, perhaps above all. Discipline ; for Ceremony 
 is the atmosphere of Corporate Religion — a condition 
 of its life. So long as the air is pure and wholesome 
 we use it, but we do not think about it. When we 
 grow conscious of it, it is a sure proof that there is 
 something wrong with the atmosphere, or with the 
 organism that breathes it. 
 
 5. I have dwelt perhaps too long upon dogma and 
 ceremonial, and left myself but little space to consider 
 
 L 
 
146 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. VI. 
 
 that most important religious function of a Church — 
 the constant enunciation of a moral code stricter than 
 the accepted ethical standards of the day. I think 
 we are often tempted to misinterpret some of our 
 Lord's sayings in a sense which is flattering to our 
 self-esteem ; and so to undervalue what we call Legal 
 Eighteousness. Our Lord never undervalues it. He 
 denounces the Scribes and Pharisees, not for observing 
 the Law, even in minute details, but for failing to 
 observe the Law. And in spite of the shortcomings 
 of their practice, their teaching, as guardians and 
 exponents of the legal morality, is accounted by Him 
 worthy of respect. " The Scribes and the Pharisees 
 sit in Moses' seat : All therefore whatsoever they bid 
 you observe, that observe and do ; but do not ye after 
 their works : for they say, and do not." ^ 
 
 Without going into the larger question, whether 
 we are justified in disparaging the Law of Moses as 
 we do, we must acknowledge that it was the high 
 average morality of the Jews, as compared with other 
 nations, which made Jewish life and Jewish religion 
 the fit setting for the ethical teaching of Jesus. And 
 among them He surely takes the best recognized 
 standard, not the worst, as the starting-point for what 
 is still better, the formation of Christian character, 
 when He says : " Except your righteousness shall 
 exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, 
 ye shall in no case enter into the Kingdom of 
 Heaven." ^ 
 
 ' Matt, xxiii. 2, 3. '^ Ibid., v. 20. 
 
Lect. VI.] ANARCHY NOT THE CURE i47 
 
 We should probably maintain that any branch of 
 the Christian Church presents a Rule of Conduct at 
 once more intelligent and more spiritual than the Law ; 
 and still we are inclined to depreciate its specific 
 commands and prohibitions : implying that we have 
 kept all these from our youth up, and are passing now 
 into a higher sphere of morality, where these elementary 
 safeguards are no longer a help or a guide. But 
 are we quite sincere ? Are we perfectly certain that 
 we have exhausted the ethical content even of that 
 extremely modified Christianity which cannot remove 
 mountains, but does tell us broadly that certain things 
 are right, and certain other things wrong ; and that we 
 ought to eschew the evil and choose the good \ Our 
 Lord has a terrible word for people who neglect the old- 
 fashioned rules and sanctions of their religion on the 
 plea that they need something more transcendental to 
 influence them : "If they hear not Moses and the 
 Prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one 
 rose from the dead." ^ 
 
 ^ Lute xvi. 31. 
 
LECTURE YII 
 
 CHRISTIANITY A REVOLUTIONARY FORCE 
 
 " The will of God, as it is fully and completely contained in 
 the Sermon on the Mount, is no less entirely distinguished from 
 the claims of the later Church than from the Jewish Law : and it 
 ought really to produce an impression of entire novelty among us 
 at the present day." — Paul Wernle. 
 
LECTURE VII 
 
 CHRISTIANITY A REVOLUTIONARY FORCE 
 
 "Except ye be converted, and become as little cMldren, ye 
 shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven." — Matt, xviii. 3. 
 
 1. No very subtle casuistry is needed to convince, no 
 very urgent entreaty to persuade the average professing 
 Christian that he has a right and a duty to take his 
 place in the political and economic framework of society ; 
 and that he can, if he is reasonably careful, use the 
 existing forms to good ends, without compromising his 
 religious principles. But it is quite another thing to 
 make ourselves realize the complementary duty, and 
 understand that we are bound, in using those forms, 
 to transmute their methods and results to something 
 wholly different from what we have hitherto accepted, 
 under the guidance of a transformed will, and a changed 
 judgment of values. To maintain that Christianity is 
 a revolutionary force is to balance dangerously between 
 paradox and platitude. On the one hand, the phenomena 
 of conversion and the changed life of individuals is so 
 famUiar, at least in theory, that, unless they can be 
 presented in some novel and striking form, they have 
 almost ceased to captivate the imagination. And, on 
 the other hand, in the political and social sphere, it 
 
152 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. VII. 
 
 would seem absurd or insincere to speak of Christianity 
 as an influence which makes for radical reforms. Ortho- 
 dox Christians are commonly thought old-fashioned ; 
 and the Church is, not quite unjustly, identified in the 
 public mind with timid conservatism in politics. The 
 mass of professing Christians themselves regard their 
 religion as something static rather than dynamic. They 
 would fain be tarrying all their lives in the Interpreter's 
 house, instead of tramping the open road with Mr. 
 Greatheart, through difiiculty and peril and extreme 
 discomfort, but on towards the Heavenly City. 
 
 If we examine this singular but not unnatural state 
 of mind, we shall find, I believe, that it is a great cause 
 of the Failure which is the subject of these Lectures ; 
 and it has its root in that deep instinct of the human 
 mind, which allows every human being to regard himself 
 and his immediate surroundings as exempt from the 
 operation of general lav/s which he cheerfully recognizes 
 when applied to others. We expect Faith to move 
 mountains and to change the face of the world, when 
 we will not allow it to change the least of our own 
 habits and opinions. 
 
 Now an instinct is a hard thing to combat ; and if 
 it were seriously argued, instead of being merely taken 
 for granted, that Christianity is a bland reactionary 
 influence whose virtue it is to make people content 
 with themselves as they are, and teach them to look 
 back instead of forward for the Golden Age, I should 
 have more confidence in citing evidence to the contrary. 
 Moreover, that evidence is, as I have said, the merest 
 
Lect. VII.] A REVOLUTIONARY FORCE 153 
 
 commonplace of religious history and experience. Yet, 
 in consideration of the practical disregard of it, you 
 must forgive me if I insist on the fact, that in any 
 age, when Christianity has had a real hold on the lives 
 and consciences of men, neither its disciples nor its 
 enemies have given any encouragement to this comfort- 
 able view of it. The words which startled Nicodemus — 
 " Except a man be born again, he cannot see the 
 Kingdom of God" — have had their literal meaning 
 and their fulfilment in every generation ; and in every 
 age those who were chiefly interested in the maintenance 
 of things as they are, have seen Christianity, not as 
 restful and reassuring, but dangerous and subversive. 
 
 The Pharisees and Sadducees saw it very clearly ; 
 they saw their political and religious supremacy under- 
 mined, their prudent compromises all shaken and dis- 
 credited ; and they were, not unnaturally, irritated and 
 alarmed. "If we let Him thus alone, all men will 
 believe on Him : and the Romans shall come and take 
 away both our place and nation. And one of them, 
 named Caiaphas, being the high priest that same year, 
 said unto them, Ye know nothing at all, nor consider 
 that it is expedient for us that one man should die for 
 the people, and that the whole nation perish not." * 
 
 Doubtless the High Priest's words bore, as the 
 Evangelist tells us, a deeper significance than he knew ; 
 but in the first place they show a keen political judg- 
 ment, a true appreciation of the nature of the force 
 which had arisen to confront him. 
 1 John xi. 48-50. 
 
154 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. VII. 
 
 So, too, when tlie Jews of Thessalonica cried 
 out, "These that have turned the world upside down 
 are come hither also ; " when Demetrius, the silversmith, 
 and his fellow - craftsmen raised a riot at Ephesus ; 
 they were, no doubt, moved by envy, and by the 
 menace to trade interests, but none the less they were 
 paying an involuntary tribute to the real purpose and 
 meaning of St. Paul's Gospel. 
 
 As time went on, and the Church grew, and grew 
 stronger, Imperial Eome itself was forced to see 
 Christianity as a revolutionary force. The true 
 telations of the Roman G-overnment with Christianity 
 are obscured by popular ideas of the cruelty and 
 malignity of persecutors. It is not to the Acts of 
 the Martyrs, but to the letter of Pliny and the rescript 
 of Trajan, that we must go for information, if we want 
 to form a correct judgment of the official attitude. 
 These documents present an interesting picture of the 
 humane and sensible governor, puzzled by an entirely 
 new factor in the problems which he had to handle ; 
 brushing aside the absurd and monstrous calumnies 
 which popular ignorance and spite levelled at the 
 Christians ; most unwilling to punish them, and yet 
 convinced that their meek obstinacy was somehow a 
 danger to the power which he represented. It is 
 equally interesting to observe that Trajan, while fully 
 alive to the perils of a system of delation, and deter- 
 mined to repress it, felt none the less that the self- 
 convicted Christian must suffer in the interest of the 
 State. And the instinct which led these good and 
 
lect. vil] a revolutionary force 155 
 
 wise men to act in a way which seems to us unpardon- 
 able, was a sound one. If the Imperial system was 
 to be maintained, Christianity could not be tolerated. 
 The whole splendid fabric of Eoman Government 
 rested on a working belief in the Divine mission of 
 the Emperor, and its continuance was incompatible 
 with a Creed, however harmless and beneficent in other 
 respects, which exalted Jesus of Nazareth, an obscure 
 provincial, above the personified deity of Rome. 
 
 So for two centuries more the persecution went on, 
 now fiercer, now more languid ; and Christianity 
 flourished in spite of it, and because of it ; till the 
 day came when the cold sagacity of Constantine 
 observed that a policy of repression had become im- 
 practicable. He eluded the alternative of unconditional 
 surrender by a compromise, and found a useful ally 
 in the power which threatened to destroy him. His 
 dexterous policy admitted his rival to a share of the 
 Purple : by allowing the Church to become Caesar, he 
 secured his own position as Augustus. And so the 
 Faith, which fear and pain had not shaken, was, in 
 some degree, bewitched and corrupted by wealth and 
 dignity. The World, as Bishop Westcott says, got into 
 the Church in the fourth century, and we have never 
 been able to get it out since. 
 
 2. And here, I think, we touch again upon one 
 at least of the causes of Failure we are seeking. If 
 I may use a somewhat bold metaphor — which has, if 
 you will think of it, a very high authority — the 
 cunning Spirit of the World takes the ferment which 
 
156 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. VII. 
 
 worked such radical changes in the constitution of 
 the human soul, and by inoculating Society at large 
 with a very dilute and attenuated serum, secures 
 for it a measure of immunity from violent and incon- 
 venient attacks. The result is only too familiar to 
 us all. In any nation or class where Christianity is 
 an inherited habit, or an accepted convention which 
 every one takes as a matter of course, the normal 
 religious experience of the individual is a very mild 
 and manageable form of the fever which consumed 
 St. Paul and wrung from him the agonized cry, 
 " Wretched man that I am ; who shall deliver me from 
 this body of death ? " We find what is called Average 
 Christianity acting as a protection against enthusiasm, 
 a positive obstacle to genuine conversion. Happily — 
 or, I would rather say, by the mercy of God — the 
 immunity it provides is not complete. I believe that 
 since Christ came there has been no generation so dull 
 and selfish, no Church so fallen into superstition and 
 formalism, but it held some souls that understood, and 
 faced the teaching of Christ in all its terror and all its 
 beauty, and made the great venture. And from time 
 to time prophets have arisen with power to preach 
 Christ as He is to men, and to compel them to forsake 
 all and follow Him. Then there has come a great 
 spiritual awakening ; a copy, though it may be faint 
 and imperfect, of what happened in Galilee and 
 Judaea nineteen hundred years ago. Such was the 
 first coming of the Friars ; such the Protestant Re- 
 formation, with all its mistakes ; the Methodist Revival 
 
Lect. VII.] A REVOLUTIONARY FORCE 157 
 
 in the eighteenth century ; the Tractarian movement in 
 the nineteenth. 
 
 And observe that in every one of these attempts 
 to realize Christianity we can trace the same stages 
 of progress and reaction which we have noted on a 
 large scale in the history of the first four centuries. 
 There is in each case the long silent preparation, the 
 sudden enthusiasm and success which drives vested 
 interests and established respectabilities from contempt 
 to alarm and open hostility — to axe and faggot in 
 the old days, to frantic abuse and misrepresentation 
 in less forcible times — and when these fail, there is 
 still the subtler policy of compromise. The world 
 adopts whatever is external and non-moral in the new 
 movement, giving it its place in the accepted ceremonial 
 of Religion, as we are told that the Emperors were 
 ready to admit the image of Christ also among the 
 gods of the tolerated Pantheon. And the World too 
 commonly has had its measure of success. It cannot 
 meet the wUd, untameable Spirit of Christianity face 
 to face. But it can turn aside its onset by courting 
 its disciples instead of persecuting them ; and by giving 
 them vested interests of their own to guard, it quenches 
 the fierceness of their attack upon its prosperity and 
 peace of mind. And so, again and again in the history 
 of mankind, we see the troubling of the waters die away 
 to a ripple. The children of this world prove wiser in 
 their generation than the children of light — 
 
 " Et minax, quod sic voluere, ponto 
 Unda recumbit." 
 
iS8 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. VII. 
 
 So it seems; but so it is not. The form of each 
 one of these revivals is determined by circumstances, 
 and perishes in the using ; but the spirit of them is 
 undying, its force indestructible. Every genuine effort 
 to obey the Mind of Christ, whether it is a great 
 national movement for Righteousness, or the secret 
 prayer of an individual disciple, helps to raise per- 
 manently the spiritual level of mankind. 
 
 " For while the tired waves vainly breaking 
 Seem here no painful inch to gain, 
 Par back, through creeks and inlets making, 
 Comes silent flooding in the main." 
 
 The moral of all these apparent failures of noble 
 purpose is not despondency nor acquiescence, but 
 unwearied effort ; or, if I may borrow the happier 
 language of a wise man, who, if he was not a Christian 
 after our way, had sometimes a very clear vision of God, 
 " The true conclusion is to turn our back on appre- 
 hensions, and embrace that shining and courageous 
 virtue, Faith. Hope is the boy, a blind, headlong, 
 pleasant fellow ; Faith is the grave, experienced, yet 
 smiling man. Hope lives on ignorance : open-eyed 
 Faith is built upon a knowledge of our life, of the 
 tyranny of circumstance, and the frailty of human 
 resolution. Hope looks for unqualified success ; but 
 Faith counts certainly on failure, and takes honourable 
 defeat to be a form of victory." ^ 
 
 That is the lesson of past failures ; and their warning 
 is, first, that we must not look back but forward— must 
 ^ E. L. Stevenson, " Virginibus Puerisque," p. 41. 
 
Lect. VII.] A REVOLUTIONARY FORCE 159 
 
 find our Christ, not in a remote past, but liere and now ; 
 for our Master does not belong to one century or 
 another, but all Time and Eternity are His. Except 
 He be in us and we in Him, St. Paul cannot save us, 
 nor St. Francis, nor Luther, nor Wesley, nor Newman. 
 We must, therefore, be on our guard against giving 
 absolute value to the outward forms in which any 
 of them brought the Truth to the men of his own 
 generation, lest we be tempted to idolatry, and forget 
 the Spirit which made those forms life-giving. And, 
 second, these failures serve to remind us that Christi- 
 anity, in its vital manifestations, has been, and has 
 been considered, a revolutionary force. It has some- 
 times, though not often, appeared to strike directly 
 at the constitution of Government and Society ; but 
 in every case it does certainly and immediately question, 
 and even contradict, maxims and principles on which 
 most men conduct their lives without discredit, and 
 without realizing, or at least without admitting, that 
 those principles are wrong or insufficient. For a man's 
 duty to himself — that easy and comprehensive obligation 
 — it substitutes his duty to God and to his neighbour ; 
 or, rather, it insists that a man's duty to God and to 
 his neighbour is identical with — is his duty to himself. 
 Accordingly, the whole system of checks and prohibi- 
 tions, which were found necessary to restrain self-love 
 from outrageous manifestations, is merged and summar- 
 ized in a positive quality of character. "For this. 
 Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not kill. 
 Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness. 
 
i€o THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. VII. 
 
 Thou slialt not covet ; and if there be any other com- 
 mandment it is briefly comprehended in this saying, 
 namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. 
 Love worketh no ill to his neighbour, therefore love 
 is the fulfilling of the law." ^ 
 
 No doubt it has already occurred to some of my 
 readers that the very phrase I offer as typical of the 
 distinctive spirit of Christianity is itself quoted, word 
 for word, from Leviticus,^ and therefore must be credited 
 not to the Gospel but to the Law. But in the context 
 there the meaning of neighbour is sharply limited by 
 the words which precede : " Thou shalt not avenge 
 nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, 
 but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." Doubt- 
 less this precept, with all its limitations, was a great 
 advance in charity and unselfishness, and indeed remains 
 to this day for many professing Christians a counsel 
 of perfection. But our Lord Himself, in the Sermon 
 on the Mount, notes its fatal defect as a rule of life, 
 by adding the complementary permission which men 
 found implicit in it : " Ye have heard that it hath 
 been said. Thou shalt love thy neighbour and hate 
 thine enemy. But I say unto you. Love your enemies 
 . . . that ye may be the children of your Father 
 which is in heaven."^ 
 
 And He shows us that in truth it is a maxim, not 
 of morality but of self-interest, and practised by those 
 who make no claim to a high moral standard : " If ye 
 
 ' Eom. xiii. 9, 10. ^ Lev. xix. 18. 
 
 3 Matt. V. 43, 44, 45. 
 
Lect. VII.] A REVOLUTIONARY FORCE i6i 
 
 love them which love you, what reward have ye? do 
 not even the publicans the same ? " ' 
 
 The words, it is true, stand written in the law : 
 and He came not to destroy the law but to fulfil ; but 
 His fulfilment differs not in degree only, but in principle, 
 from all that went before. And it is this fulfilment, 
 this interpretation, which is binding upon us. In the 
 old theory of life every soul, however enlightened and 
 civilized, is in the last resort an Ishmael, standing 
 for itself against the powers of Nature, against all 
 other human souls, and even in a sense against God, 
 in so far as it holds itself outside and apart from Him ; 
 now making Him, as even the devout Jews were so 
 ready to do, a partisan in its quarrels ; now setting 
 up its will against His will in the pursuance of selfish 
 ends. In the new theory this antagonism, this dis- 
 tinction, vanishes ; each soul is a member of Christ, 
 and cannot prosper or suff'er to itself alone. 
 
 3. This change in the point of view, whether it 
 be sudden or gradual, is what we mean by Conversion. 
 And, as I have said above, and at the risk of being 
 tedious will repeat, we all of us are perfectly ready 
 to admit that this change has taken place in countless 
 human beings. We acknowledge that it is a radical 
 change, not only afiecting external actions, but re-creating 
 the inmost being, and transfiguring the whole aspect 
 of Life. We allow that it is a necessary change, that 
 without it a man cannot come into the right relation 
 with God and his fellow-men. But by that singular 
 
 1 Matt. V. 46. 
 
 M 
 
i62 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. VII. 
 
 gift of abstraction which enables each of us to con- 
 template his own case as unique and apart, we do not 
 apply these truths to ourselves, while we accept them 
 as being of universal and undoubted application to all 
 ages, nations, and classes but our own. 
 
 For instance, we deplore with entire candour the 
 frigid self-approval of the Pharisee, the comfortable 
 formalism of the Sadducee ; we understand that it 
 was impossible for these men, with their conception 
 of Eighteousness, to become disciples of Jesus of 
 Nazareth, to be anything but His enemies and traducers. 
 We feel, quite sincerely, that even for so good a man 
 as Nicodemus it is true that he could not see the 
 Kingdom of God without passing through a change 
 so vital that it must be called a new birth. And it 
 is even so with another type of accepted virtue which 
 we find in the centurion Cornelius — a character instinct 
 with the old Eoman spirit of order and discipline — the 
 fine flower of paganism even now reaching forward 
 to a belief in the one true God, yet lacking something 
 to make it complete. And over against the respecta- 
 bilities of that age are its abjects — the publican, the 
 harlot, the slave, the jailer, with their conventions of 
 sordid gain, and petty tyranny, and sensual pleasure. 
 There could be no sharper contrast, no wider variety. 
 Yet to all these — to the self-righteous Jew, to the 
 Eoman soldier, to the parasites and scourges of a 
 corrupt society — we believe that Christ brought the 
 change, the one change, the utter change, that could 
 make them new creatures, and save them from desperate 
 
Lect. VII.] A REVOLUTIONARY FORCE 163 
 
 and hopeless wickedness, from routine, from complacency. 
 We believe, and we admire ; and remain, on the whole, 
 personally as unconcerned as David was while he listened 
 to Nathan telling his story. 
 
 And when we pass from the record of Christianity 
 in those primitive times to Western Europe in the 
 Middle Ages, we are equally at our ease. I have been 
 reading lately a clever partisan book, written with 
 the avowed object of exploding what the author sup- 
 poses to be a prevalent delusion, the Myth of the 
 so-called Age of Faith.' With much that is interesting 
 he brings together a great deal of sordid and shocking 
 detail as to the lives and manners of the people of 
 that time. I do not know that the book has anything 
 to teU us that is really new to students of history ; 
 but it does serve to emphasize the tremendous contrast ; 
 and shows us how quickly and vigorously the world 
 revolted against the practical Christianity of St. Francis 
 of Assisi's teaching, as soon as it was rid of the charm 
 of his personality. The moral the writer draws is that 
 the ascetic sanctity at which the first Franciscans aimed 
 was merely a reaction from the monstrous cruelty 
 and sensuality of the times, and itself, in fact, no less 
 monstrous and unreasonable. The moral the average 
 Christian reader of the twentieth century will be inclined 
 to draw is that the great saints and great sinners of 
 the thirteenth have equally little bearing on the moral 
 and religious problems of his own time and his own 
 soul. But suppose that the true moral were that the 
 1 G. G. Coulton, " St. Francis to Dante." 
 
1 64 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. VII. 
 
 Saints were right after all, and that their ideal is as 
 far removed from ours as it was from that of Machia- 
 velli, and worse men than Machiavelli/ 
 
 But, indeed, we manage to bring the case much 
 nearer to our own time and place without letting it 
 touch ourselves. We realize so fully the spiritual 
 deadness and dulness of England under the Georges, 
 that we are sometimes inclined to exaggerate it. And 
 passing at once to the present, let me cite briefly two 
 salient instances of the change which Christianity still 
 has the power to work in human life and character. 
 And I would ask you to observe that we do not 
 question the fitness of the method or the value of 
 the result ; we are even ready to assist, with a greater 
 or less degree of enthusiasm, these or similar efforts 
 to extend the blessings of Christianity to other people. 
 And yet we manage to regard them all the time as 
 if they applied to beings of another genus, another 
 world, than our own ; proceeding, I fear, tacitly on 
 the presumption that we are adequately Christian 
 already — ^just persons who need no repentance. 
 
 I take, then, two examples, of which I happen to 
 know something in detail. Sixty years ago the 
 Melanesian Mission found the islanders of that great 
 Archipelago typical heathen savages. I will say 
 nothing of many ugly aspects of savage life, which 
 we are apt to overlook, while we dwell rather on what 
 
 ' I take Machiavelli, though he does not belong to the thirteenth 
 century, as the sincere exponent of the non-Christian theory of 
 life in mediaeval Italy. 
 
Lect. VII.] A REVOLUTIONARY FORCE 165 
 
 we conceive to be its romantic and picturesque sides. 
 I will speak only of two dominant influences, which 
 darkened their whole existence, each in turn giving 
 fresh strength to the other — Hatred and Fear. Every 
 island, every clan, every village, lived in perpetual 
 war with its neighbour. "Within the compass of one 
 small island there would be two or three tribes speak- 
 ing difiierent tongues, and holding no intercourse except 
 the intercourse of rapine and murder. And what stood 
 to them in the place of religion was abject fear — fear 
 of malignant spirits, fear of witchcraft. The reef 
 where they fished was haunted by other ghostly fishers 
 whose quarry was men's lives ; the forest was full of 
 demons waiting to catch the unwary traveller ; the 
 night was possessed with the horror of great darkness. 
 And ever about their path and about their bed was 
 the fear of magic that could kill them in torments, 
 and does still kill the heathen islanders. Under the 
 shadow of their hideous legends and fancies, strong 
 men sufi^ered the miseries of a nervous child with a 
 cruel and superstitious nurse. From these two plagues 
 Christianity has delivered them ; it has taught them 
 that all men are brethren, and saved them from the 
 curse of unreasoning hatred ; it has lifted the cloud 
 of fear from their lives — the fear of darkness, the 
 fear of magic, and the panic cruelty that always goes 
 with that fear. And it would be perversely false to 
 say that this has come to them by mere contact with 
 European civilization, when we remember what the 
 coming of the white man without religion has meant 
 
i66 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. VII. 
 
 to the native races of the Pacific. Surely it is little 
 wonder that the cry for Christian teachers goes up 
 from all the islands. It is a great wonder, and a great 
 reproach to the Church of England if that cry goes 
 up unanswered. 
 
 But if we are called to be evangelists, we must not 
 forget that we are first called to be disciples. While 
 we have to teach the heathen, we have also to learn 
 from him. And in foreign Mission work, the very 
 greatness of the outward change which accompanies 
 conversion may obscure the lesson, and help us still 
 to regard it as something remote from ourselves and 
 our needs. So my other example is chosen from much 
 nearer home, among men and women whose Christianity 
 does not manifestly change the outward circumstances 
 of their lives, but leaves them working, and suffering, 
 and maybe starving, as they were before, and yet 
 makes the whole world of time and eternity a different 
 thing for them. When I speak of the miracle of 
 Christianity among the poor in East and South London, 
 I desire to guard myself most carefully from slipping 
 into a patronizing tone of superiority. If we are to 
 do anything for them, we must realize that the truth 
 is, and the difficulty is, that in some things they 
 are better than the classes who have yet the duty 
 of guiding them and enlightening them. I believe, 
 as indeed we are bound to believe, if we read our New 
 Testament, that the essential virtues of Christianity 
 are not less, but more common, among the poor than 
 among ourselves, and I believe that they are found 
 
Lect. VII.] A REVOLUTIONARY FORCE 1(17 
 
 too in those who are guided by no conscious religious 
 belief. It is good that we should understand this, 
 for it both gives us hope and makes us humble. But 
 the knowledge does not blind us to the existence of 
 sin and misery, of brutality and self-indulgence ; and 
 on the other hand, of hopeless unhappiness and dull or 
 reckless despair, not to be cured but by Faith in Jesus 
 Christ. Those who have worked among the poor bear 
 witness that it does cure them. They tell us of coarse 
 and wicked lives purified, of selfish lives ennobled, 
 and of sufi'ering and want and death faced, not with 
 stoical resignation, but with serene happiness. The 
 Spirit of Christ does, here to-day, work the utter 
 change from sin to holiness, from bitter, unsatisfied 
 revolt to peace and joy ; it does give a meaning and 
 a glory to life which cannot be touched by weariness 
 or pain or poverty. 
 
 And last, we are ready to admit it for individuals 
 of our own class. When Eeligion has a real hold on 
 a man, when he is converted, he is literally a different 
 man from what he was before— difi'erent from those 
 to whom the awakening has not come. The outward 
 change may not be great ; he still shares keenly in 
 the common life of work and amusement ; but his 
 outlook, his purpose, and the value he puts on things, 
 are quite changed. Not once or twice only, but many 
 times in my life as a schoolmaster and a college tutor, I 
 have seen the change come : I have seen boys and men 
 refuse the pleasant path which lay open before them, 
 and choose a life of drudgery and narrow means, that 
 
1 68 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. VII. 
 
 offered little hope of men's praise, only the reward 
 of duty done. Or they might make no outward change 
 at all, and follow to the end the career they had chosen, 
 as soldier, lawyer, man of business, or what it might 
 chance to be, but with a new meaning for success, 
 a new sense of their duty to God, to their neighbour, 
 and to themselves. And I am as sure as that I stand 
 here, that it was Christ who worked that change, and 
 that He can work the like radical change in all men — 
 if we will. But it is desperately hard for any one 
 of us to make the effort of will which is necessary 
 for effective Belief. We can see the truth for every 
 creature but ourselves ; we can see that their natural 
 instincts and tolerated practice are deplorably at 
 variance with the Ideal which is to bring Salvation 
 to the world ; that their character needs a revolutionary 
 change, a new motive, a new outlook. And we cannot 
 deny that they are men of like passions with ourselves. 
 And yet we are sure that our ways, our ideas and 
 opinions, our conventions and habits, must be somehow 
 consistent with Christianity. They are so comfortable, 
 so hallowed by usage, and, as we are convinced in spite 
 of apparent discrepancies, so essentially moral — in a 
 word, so clearly right and reasonable — that any doctrine 
 which conflicts with them must be questionable, if not 
 heretical. 
 
 But, in fact, every unconverted life is equally remote 
 from the spirit of Christianity ; if I may use an old- 
 fashioned phrase, equally displeasing to God. 
 
 4. I believe that we are on the verge, if indeed we 
 
Lect. VII.] A REVOLUTIONARY FORCE 169 
 
 are not unawares in the midst, of one more great 
 Religious Movement, perhaps the greatest the world 
 has known. The principle which inspires it comes, 
 on the intellectual side, from our old enemy and helper 
 Science in the doctrine of the Unity of all Life and 
 Force ; on the social side, it appears in the reaction 
 against that exaggerated individualism which, like 
 Cain of old, denies corporate responsibility : its religious 
 aspect is a quickened belief in the brotherhood of all 
 men in Christ. I have called it a religious movement, 
 and it is essentially religious ; but if accredited re- 
 ligions will have nothing to do with it, it will go 
 on nevertheless, inevitable and irresistible. But if it 
 is Christianized, if it is fearlessly claimed for Christ 
 and guided by His Spirit, it will make the world 
 Christian. 
 
 To make the world Christian. The words imply 
 a revolution so tremendous that the mere naming of 
 it moves experience to an incredulous smile, and makes 
 enthusiasm itself falter. And yet it is the task which 
 our Lord laid upon His disciples, the task in which 
 all baptized Christians, lay or cleric, man or woman, 
 are solemnly pledged to take their part. And that 
 we may be fit to take our part there is one thing 
 needful ; if we are to help at all in making the world 
 Christian, we must first be really Christians ourselves ; 
 and I fear there is no doubt that for the most of 
 us, for all except a very few, that means we must 
 become Christians. We must learn, with pain and 
 wonder, to look on existence as Christ looked on it. 
 
I70 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. VII. 
 
 If we cling to the old values, and are content to 
 rule our lives by the compromises and catchwords 
 of worldly wisdom ; if we are satisfied with ourselves 
 and our standards — then we need conversion : the 
 starved, commonplace spirit of us must suffer a change 
 " into something rich and strange " before we have a 
 right to call ourselves disciples of Jesus Christ, or 
 profess to be forwarding His cause in the world. 
 
 " Except ye be converted, and become as little 
 children, ye cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven." 
 The familiar verse warns us that we cannot even begin 
 the Christian life unless we are ready to give up much 
 that we prize, much that we have given time and 
 trouble to acquire ; much outwardly in consideration, 
 wealth, and comfort ; much inwardly in pride, in- 
 difference, and the timidity which we call prudence. 
 
 " Become as little children." If we took the words 
 seriously, they would seem repellent or absurd to 
 people who value themselves chiefly on cautious judg- 
 ment, business acumen, and a proper sense of their 
 position. 
 
 We have all, I suppose, been amused and em- 
 barrassed by the way children ignore social distinctions, 
 and actually take it for granted that we stand in the 
 ordinary human relation to our servants and their 
 class. Children soon grow wiser, and learn that there 
 are bounds which they may not pass over, and that 
 a breach of the convention is confusing and unwelcome 
 to their humble friends. Of course the question is not 
 a simple one ; it is infinitely difiicult, and complicated 
 
Lect. VII.] A REVOLUTIONARY FORCE 171 
 
 by the fact that the class feeling is just as strong 
 among the poor as among the rich, and instinctively 
 resentful and suspicious of any attempt to cross the 
 border. But it remains that class distinctions, which 
 do not seem to grow fainter with the advance of 
 political democracy, are the great barrier to Christian 
 work, for they seem to make impossible the sympathy 
 and open speaking which are the condition of Spiritual 
 influence. 
 
 The very existence of such a dilemma proves how 
 profound a revolution in human thought and feeling 
 is needed before Society can be brought into accord 
 with Christian principles. But it proves also that this 
 revolution must be in its origin not outward, brought 
 about by legislation or by violence, but inward and 
 spiritual, essentially the reform of character, not of 
 institutions. Doubtless with the reform of character 
 institutions also would change, but in what direction 
 and with what effect in detail it is not easy nor very 
 useful to conjecture. I have had occasion in these 
 Lectures to compare and contrast the spirit of Chris- 
 tianity with the ethics of many forms of polity realized 
 or imagined ; and looking back over what I have said, 
 I find that my conclusions have been mainly negative. 
 We can tell in many points what a really Christian 
 Society would not be like ; what it would be like we 
 cannot tell with certainty, for want of experience. We 
 have seen, I think, that it would not be realized in any 
 actual or imaginary State of Nature, or Tolstoian 
 Anarchy, which ascribes to human nature, untaught 
 
172 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. VII. 
 
 and undisciplined, a virtue which is denied it alike by 
 experience and by the Christian doctrine of Sin. Still 
 less perhaps can it be identified with the Social System 
 now generally existing, with its maxims of expediency 
 and compromise, its toleration of misery and oppression 
 in some classes as the basis of ease and culture in 
 others, and its acceptance of selfishness as the only 
 and even as the right motive of human action. While 
 men are men and not angels, they must have some 
 social order and discipline to help and support their 
 weakness ; on the other hand, the existing order does 
 not seem to fulfil the office of constraining, or even 
 of enabling us to bear one another's burdens. Some 
 change is needed. But all the more we must be on 
 our guard against rashly identifying the spirit of 
 Christianity with any of the definite schemes of 
 political and social reform hitherto offered to us. It 
 is easy to distinguish it from the pedantic individualism 
 which has resulted in the horrors of unrestrained com- 
 petition and monopoly. And indeed for the moment 
 such thorough-going individualism is discredited. We 
 are more tempted to turn to the rising sun of Socialism, 
 a name of terror or of promise as it may be, but to-day 
 indifferent to no one. And we do well to turn to it, 
 and study it long and earnestly, for there is much 
 in it that comes from Christ and makes for His cause. 
 Its ideals are truly and profoundly Christian. But 
 Socialism, as we know it, has not always kept its policy 
 true to its ideals. It has been tempted to make — nay, 
 it has already made — its appeal to selfishness ; and. 
 
Lect. VII.] A REVOLUTIONARY FORCE 173 
 
 SO far, has become a disintegrating instead of an uniting 
 force. The true Socialism is one aspect of Christianity, 
 and cannot exist apart from it ; but there is a pressing 
 danger that in our enthusiasm we may entangle our 
 Christianity in the details of a programme, and be 
 content with the effort to make men act unselfishly 
 in this or that against their wills, instead of training 
 the unselfish character to blossom into right action. 
 In truth, all sincere political theories have their place 
 in the system of the Christian State ; it will use them 
 all — the ideal of kingship, the ideal of aristocracy, the 
 ideal of personal liberty, the ideal of common responsi- 
 bility — in due balance and co-ordination ; for not one 
 of them is naturally alien and incapable of being 
 Christianized. 
 
 Christianity as a rule of life is indeed identical with 
 none of them, but its spirit is far more sharply con- 
 trasted with popular ideas of Religion, ideas so congenial 
 to the human mind that they reassert themselves from 
 age to age — the idea that Eeligion is a separate and 
 intermittent activity, confined to its own times and 
 places, claiming at most one part of life, and leaving 
 the rest to other activities in which it has no share ; 
 and the idea that it is a method of escaping deserved 
 punishment by the use of prescribed formulas and 
 ceremonies. We know that both these superstitions 
 pass by the name of Christianity. We know by 
 humiliating experience how difficult it is to exclude 
 some tincture of them from our own conception of it. 
 But real Christianity has nothing in common with 
 
174 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. VII. 
 
 them ; it is not accommodating or indulgent ; it will 
 not wait upon our leisure, or condone our pleasant 
 vices ; but inexorably demands the whole of our being, 
 emotion, will, and intellect, the whole of our life, 
 thought, speech, and action ; and thereby unquestion- 
 ably declares itself a revolutionary force ; so revolu- 
 tionary that it can afford to leave human institutions 
 unaltered for the moment. The outward framework of 
 Government and Society is indifferent, and can be used 
 for good or evil ; but no thought of man's heart is 
 indifferent, and it is the sum of men's thoughts alone 
 that gives the Spirit that can inform the frame, and 
 mould it gradually and silently into an instrument for 
 Righteousness. 
 
 " The Kingdom of Heaven is like unto leaven, 
 which a woman took, and hid in three measures of 
 meal, till the whole was leavened." ^ 
 ' Matt. xiii. 33. 
 
LECTURE VIII 
 
 SOME PEACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS 
 
 " Q. What is the duty of man? 
 
 " A. To assist his fellows, to develop his own higher self, to 
 strive towards good in every way open to his powers, and generally 
 to seek to know the laws of Nature, and to obey the Will of God ; 
 in whose service alone can be found that harmonious exercise of 
 the faculties which is identical with perfect freedom." — Oliver 
 Lodge. 
 
LECTURE VIII 
 
 SOME PRACTICAL CONSIDEKATIONS 
 
 " Turn Thee again, thou God of Hosts, look down from heaven : 
 behold and visit this vine ; and the place of the vineyard that Thy 
 right hand hath planted; and the branch that Thou madest so 
 strong for Thyself."— Ps. Ixxx. 14, 15. 
 
 On this Sunday morning I come to the end of my 
 task and of my opportunity. I hope I have not proved 
 quite unworthy of that opportunity and of the patient 
 hearing your kindness has given me Sunday after 
 Sunday. I trust that I have been enabled to speak 
 intelligibly some part of the thought that was in me, 
 for I believe that, however it has been spoiled and 
 travestied by faulty utterance, it was a thought worth 
 speaking, not as mine, but as a message of Christ. 
 But to-day, as I stand here for the last time as Bampton 
 Lecturer, my mind cannot help dwelling on the things 
 that I have left unsaid, the things that I have said 
 amiss ; and I know that it is too late for me now to 
 fill up much that is lacking ; to make the crooked 
 straight, and the rough places plain. And so the 
 words I have taken as the text of this last Lecture 
 are chosen to carry our minds back to the verse which 
 stood at the head of the first : " When I looked that 
 
 N 
 
178 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. VII I. 
 
 it should bring forth grapes, wherefore brought it forth 
 wild grapes ? " 
 
 1. "We feel, I think, that it is the Prophet, not the 
 Psalmist, who has drawn the truer meaning for us from 
 this figure of the Vine and the Vineyard of the Lord. 
 If there is failure, it is not because " the wild boar 
 out of the wood doth root it up : and the wild beasts 
 of the field devour it," ^ not because " her hedge is 
 broken down ; " there are only too many hedges. The 
 failure lies in this, that when He looks that we should 
 bring forth grapes, we bring forth wild grapes. Oppres- 
 sion and persecution are not the Eeproach of the Gospel, 
 they are its glory. Its shame is the lives of Christians. 
 " By their fruits ye shall know them." And what 
 are the fruits of Christian character as we know it in 
 ourselves? Surely not the bounteous clusters which 
 are the natural fruit of the wholesome, tended, disci- 
 plined vine, fruit to make glad the heart of man — 
 but the scanty, wizened, sour bunches of the wild 
 vine, raris lahrusca racemis, the fruit of self-will and 
 indiscipline that has not known the hand of the 
 Garden er. " Turn Thee again, thou God of Hosts, look 
 down from heaven : behold and visit this vine." 
 
 But let us leave the Prophet and the Psalmist, 
 and descend at once from the solemn dignity of Old 
 Testament metaphor to the commonplace realities of 
 our own place and time. We are all agreed, I think, 
 that reform is needed, in social and industrial conditions, 
 in the lives and characters of individuals, and even 
 » Ps. Ixxx. 13. 
 
Lect. VIIL] some practical considerations 179 
 
 possibly in our own character and life. The question 
 is whether a return to the principles of Christ's teach- 
 ing offers a practical way to that Reform. And this 
 question involves another; namely, whether Christ 
 intended His Church to be universal or to be a limited 
 body of believers saved out of a lost world. If the 
 latter was what He intended, eadit quaestio ; for on 
 the one hand, in that case, Christianity is not a failure, 
 having continuously fulfilled this purpose since the 
 time of its foundation ; and on the other, it has no 
 bearing on the problems of Society. We must admit 
 that this view has been widely held, and that it 
 can be rather cogently supported from Holy Writ ; 
 notably by certain passages in St. Paul's Epistles and 
 St. John's Gospel. I am not going to argue the 
 question at length ; but I think I am justified in 
 saying that it is based on a confusion between the 
 fact and the ideal, and that the distinction is quite 
 clearly drawn in the New Testament. As a fact, the 
 Christian Church is, and always has been, a body of 
 the elect, chosen out of the world ; and this is not 
 merely temporary or accidental. The Church preserves 
 itself by separation, and teaches by contrast. But 
 on the other hand, its ideal is to become an universal 
 Society with a common rule of life binding on all 
 men whatever. And I conceive that this Ideal is 
 vitally true and essential, insomuch that Christianity 
 fails in proportion as it tends to remain limited and 
 exclusive, and succeeds in proportion as it tends to 
 widen its influence over all classes and individuals 
 
i8o THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. VIII. 
 
 and all departments of life. An impartial study of 
 the New Testament shows that this Ideal was always 
 present to the minds of the first Christian writers ; 
 it is definitely expressed in such passages as the 
 following from St. John and St. Paul : " He is the 
 propitiation for our Sins : and not for ours only, but 
 also for the sins of the whole world." ^ "God our 
 Saviour, who will have all men to be saved and to 
 come to a knowledge of the truth." ^ 
 
 2. I do not labour the point, because I think I 
 may take it that there is a consensus among Christians 
 to-day that Christ did mean His Kingdom to be 
 universal, and that the extension of His Kingdom is 
 the way out of many evils which the kingdoms of 
 this World have brought into existence. But there 
 is no such consensus as to the steps which should be 
 taken to reach the desired end. So I account it worth 
 while to put before you what seem to me some of 
 the necessary conditions of the Reform of ourselves 
 and our system on Christian lines. There will be 
 nothing original or startling in what I have to say ; 
 but it will be for you to consider and judge whether 
 thoughts, which are no doubt familiar to you all in 
 some form, are wise and practicable as I express them ; 
 whether, in fact, this is the way or one way of 
 persuading mankind to give a fair trial to Christianity 
 as a general rule of life and conduct. 
 
 And first, as is perhaps natural to one of my 
 education and calling, I place the Importance of having 
 1 1 John ii. 2. 2 j Tim. ii. 3, 4. 
 
Lect. VIII.] SOME PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS i8i 
 
 a Christian Clergy. The phrase sounds perhaps para- 
 doxical, even flippant. I may seem to you to have 
 slipped into a fault of taste while straining after an 
 epigram. Nothing is further from my intention than 
 to speak lightly on so serious a topic. And on the 
 other hand, while I use the words in all sad earnest, 
 I have no wish to set up as a censor of better men than 
 myself. But I do see that there are special difficulties 
 in the way of clergymen at the present day being 
 really Christian, and those difficulties are not always 
 surmounted. If the idea that it is hard for a clergy- 
 man to be a Christian is strange to any of you, let me 
 speak for a moment of those special difficulties. I need 
 not dwell long on what I feel most, the temptations 
 which beset an academic clergyman, college tutor or 
 schoolmaster, the greater part of whose work necessarily 
 lies in secular study and routine of business ; tempta- 
 tions to coldness and unspirituality ; for those tempta- 
 tions are obvious. But it does not seem to me to 
 be really any easier for parish priests, whose life is 
 more ostensibly occupied with sacred things. I have 
 no doubt that in the last fifty years the clergy have 
 improved greatly in energy and system, and in devotion 
 to the Church as a divinely ordained society. But in 
 those very virtues are their corresponding dangers. 
 No doubt parish work in the old days was too often 
 slipshod and inefi"ective ; but it is possible to give 
 too much value to the externals of organization, and 
 so fall into idolatry. A clergyman is tempted to be 
 content if the machinery of his parish is running 
 
i82 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. VIII. 
 
 smoothly, if the clubs and societies are full and 
 active, the services bright and well attended. He 
 may spend himself utterly on these things ; and 
 yet be starving the souls of his people and his own 
 soul ; growing hard and unspiritual and self-satisfied. 
 Then enthusiasm for the Church is not always 
 tempered by charity ; it makes men judge those that 
 are without, and not always judge them fairly. 
 
 But after all, system and energy and enthusiasm 
 are good things in themselves, and need only to be 
 touched by the sweet reasonableness of the Spirit of 
 Christ to make them good in the using. But there 
 are failings for which so much cannot be said. Perhaps 
 the greatest cause which makes us unprofitable servants 
 to-day is Ignorance. The English Clergy was once 
 called the Wonder of the World for its learning ; but 
 compared with the lay folk it is a learned clergy 
 no longer. It is, of course, nothing but good that 
 the general standard has risen ; and it would be 
 absurd to expect a busy parish priest to keep abreast 
 of the latest word that has been written either on 
 Theology, or on social questions. But there are two 
 things every clergyman must know, if he is to be a 
 minister of Christ — his Bible and his people. 
 
 As a Church we must use intelligent criticism and 
 sincere exegesis if we are to understand what is the 
 Word of God, and be listened to by educated people. 
 As individuals we need, perhaps more, that deep and 
 exact knowledge of the Sacred Text, which I think 
 is very rare among candidates for Orders, but is worth 
 
Lect.VIIL] some practical considerations 183 
 
 more than all other learning for purposes of teaching 
 and devotion. There is so much to read, so much to 
 learn nowadays, that it is hard to get such a knowledge 
 of the Bible. Yet we must get it ; and we must get 
 a knowledge of our people, and learn what are the 
 wants and perplexities of the present day, before we 
 can minister to them. And that is hard too. Prejudice 
 stands in the way, and the inertia which it is truer to call 
 weariness than sloth. Some of us are too busy, and 
 some of us, I fear, are too much bound by convention 
 and custom, and a sense of what is due to our position, 
 to enter fully and sincerely into the thoughts and 
 needs of our lay brethren. And the problem of feeling 
 and winning sympathy is certainly not made easier 
 for clergymen by the fact that they are ministers of 
 a State Church. The cares of this World and the 
 deceitfulness of riches are ever present with us in a 
 somewhat acute form. I am unwilling to embark in a 
 digression upon the advantages and disadvantages of 
 Establishment ; but it is a subject which in this con- 
 nection cannot be passed over without a word ; because 
 the question of Disestablishment does not lie in the 
 remote or near future, but is present with us and 
 urgent. Against the separation of Church and State, 
 there is a large body of honest sentiment, and a 
 perfectly reasonable desire to retain what is admitted 
 to be only an ideal, until it can be again fulfilled in 
 fact ; and there is the fear of dislocation and confusion, 
 and the check to spiritual work, especially in country 
 districts, which that separation would entail before the 
 
i84 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. VIII. 
 
 Church was able to reorganize its system and its 
 Ministry on an independent basis. On the other side, 
 it is pleaded that a Privy Council and a House of 
 Commons, which rightly contain men of any religious 
 belief and no religious belief, are impossible as a final 
 Court of Appeal in questions of Discipline, and much 
 more so in questions of Doctrine ; that a supposed 
 State endowment encourages the laity in an entirely 
 false view of their duty in maintaining their Church ; 
 and finally, that in the matter of privilege the Church 
 of England is virtually disestablished already, and 
 that the remnants of privilege are dearly bought at 
 the price of liberty. Churchmen begin to question 
 whether it is not worth while to recognize publicly 
 the fact that the Church of England is no longer a 
 National Church, as a first step to making it one, if 
 possible. It should, moreover, be remembered that the 
 cry for Disestablishment comes no longer only from the 
 opponents of the Church. For one clergyman who 
 held such views thirty years ago, there must be ten 
 to-day who wish for Disestablishment, and a hundred 
 who view the prospect of it calmly and dispassionately. 
 The question is no longer whether the Church can 
 escape Disestablishment, but whether it can tolerate 
 Establishment in the present conditions. 
 
 However, I do not wish to press the view that 
 an Established Church is really a fatal hindrance to 
 the Christianity of its Clergy, for I do not believe it. 
 There is a far more serious difficulty in the way of 
 all who are set apart, in whatever religious body, for 
 
Lect. VIII.] SOME PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS 185 
 
 the Ministry of the Word and Sacraments— a personal 
 and moral difficulty. On the one hand, we all feel 
 that it is indispensable to an effective Ministry that 
 the life of the Minister should be as near to the 
 principles of the Eeligion which he teaches, as by 
 God's Grace he can make it. On the other hand, it 
 is inevitable, if we are to be guides and prophets at 
 all, that we should preach better than we live ; because 
 Religion is a greater and a holier thing than the life 
 of the best of men. We have this treasure in earthen 
 vessels. And this necessity involves a double danger. 
 There is a real danger that a man who is occupied 
 in studying and teaching the Life of Christ, when he 
 looks on it and on the weakness and imperfection of 
 his own life, may be cast down and discouraged by 
 the terrible contrast, and so be tempted to relax his 
 efforts both in teaching and living. And if this seems 
 to you a fanciful and morbid apprehension, there is 
 at least no doubt about that other instant danger, 
 that one who has perhaps attained some success as a 
 preacher or a counsellor may be content with that ; 
 and, even while he is still thinking to guide others 
 in the Way, grow cold in his own Religion, careless 
 in his own life. The fear that haunted St. Paul is 
 still for every ordained Minister not a terror only, 
 but a danger : iirj ttcos aXXots /oj/avfas avros dSoKijUo? 
 
 My brethren, pray for us. And pray also for 
 yourselves, for under God you are responsible for us ; 
 1 1 Cor. ix. 27. 
 
i86 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. VIII. 
 
 and that not only because it is from the ranks of the 
 laity that the Clergy are called, and the Christian 
 home does more in the moulding of the true Priest 
 than any other human agency ; not only because in 
 your hands it lies to keep us true to our vows and 
 to exact from us the best we have to give in Life 
 and Doctrine ; but because in very truth you share 
 with us this Priesthood. I am a firm believer in the 
 Sacrament of Holy Orders. I deliberately call it a 
 Sacrament as being neither a magical ceremony, nor 
 merely a decent form with no particular meaning. 
 I would not abate or change one word of our Ordination 
 service, for I hold that God has given the Church 
 authority to delegate to the Priest and the Bishop 
 spiritual functions which no man can rightly discharge 
 unless he be duly ordained thereto. But neither are 
 the duly ordained ministers to discharge them as being 
 lords over God's heritage, but as servants of all — 
 servants of men as well as of God. Indeed, they 
 cannot discharge them otherwise in any true sense. 
 The people are every whit as necessary to corporate 
 worship as the Minister, and that not merely as repre- 
 sented by him, or as listeners and lookers-on. Without 
 their active co-operation the office and authority of the 
 priesthood is a thing meaningless and profane, incon- 
 sistent not only with the idea of a Church, but with 
 the idea of Christianity. We have reason to be 
 thankful that the Church of England has so plainly 
 marked her sense of this truth in the Book of Common 
 Prayer. It has been pointed out to us lately that 
 
Lect.VIIL] some practical considerations 187 
 
 the Daily Offices cannot properly be said except with 
 a congregation ; the moral of which is, I take it, not 
 that the Clergy should give up daily services, but 
 that people should go to them. And in the Great 
 Service of all, the priesthood of the laity is emphasized 
 with no uncertain sound. The Eite of Holy Communion 
 not only may not, but cannot, be celebrated without 
 people as well as Minister. 
 
 And if you as laity have a right to your part 
 in the Ministry of Worship, with its corresponding 
 obligation, you have a still more undoubted part in 
 the Ministry of Conversion, the Apostolic office of 
 evangelizing the World. I do not mean that every 
 Christian man and woman is bound forthwith to go 
 to the ends of the earth or to the East End of London, 
 and be a missionary in the technical sense. I do not 
 suggest that it is everybody's duty, or the duty of 
 more than a very few in each generation, to give up 
 their lives to definite social and religious work. For 
 many people, to do so would be a desertion of duty ; 
 it might even be self-indulgence masquerading as 
 heroism. The daily work of the world has to be kept 
 going ; and the great majority of men and women 
 are bound, first, to earn their own living, and then 
 to serve those few whom God has put close to them 
 in this world ; " to make upon the whole a family 
 happier by their presence." It is by this, by minding 
 our own business in a true and noble sense, that most 
 of us are called on to do our evangelizing. This is 
 a homely and disappointing doctrine for ardent souls ; 
 
i88 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. VIII. 
 
 and I am half ashamed to enforce it by so trite a 
 saying. But it cannot be repeated too often that a 
 Christian Life is the best argument for the Truth of 
 Christianity as a Creed. It is the only argument that 
 unconverted Humanity will attend to ; and I think 
 unconverted Humanity is right. But further, it is 
 clear that a Christian life, lived in normal circumstances, 
 is more impressive and encouraging than one lived 
 in special conditions ; so that the genuine layman 
 has an advantage as a missionary over the clergyman 
 and the philanthropist. To he a Christian in any 
 genuine sense is to preach the Gospel, and that per- 
 haps in the hardest and most efficient way. But the 
 apostolate of the laity may find, and if the spirit is 
 there inevitably does find, directer methods. The 
 right attitude of mind towards our fellow-creatures 
 brings or discovers opportunities of service ; and service 
 gives the unresented claim to speak a word in season. 
 
 There is, moreover, another reason, deeper and 
 more intimate even than the right to share in worship 
 and evangelization, why a Christian Laity is not only 
 desirable but necessary in order to the fulfilment of 
 the purpose of the Incarnation and the existence of 
 a Christian Church. And that reason lies in the 
 Christian verity of which I have spoken before, the 
 equal value of every soul before God — equal value 
 and equal responsibility. 
 
 Plato ^ has taught us that a State or a Society 
 as a whole may claim certain qualities in right of 
 Eepublic, iv. 428, 429. 
 
Lect. VIII.] SOME PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS 189 
 
 their existence in a portion of itself. Thus a State 
 may be called wise if its government is wise ; and 
 brave, if its soldiers are brave. But when it comes to 
 the continent Virtue, StKatoani^^, Kighteousness, it must 
 be everywhere or nowhere. Not only is it desirable 
 that every citizen should possess and manifest that 
 virtue, but it is not possible for it to exist without 
 the co-operation of all classes and individuals ; for it 
 is essentially a relation of class to class, and man to 
 man, and of the whole Society to the Divine Principle, 
 Immanent and Transcendent. What Plato called 
 StKatocn5i/T7, we, to whom Christ has been made known, 
 call Christianity : the knowledge of our right relation 
 to God and our fellow-men, and a life of thought 
 and action in harmony with that relation. But this 
 life cannot be fully lived, this knowledge cannot be 
 fully attained, except by common action based upon 
 a lively sense of individual responsibility to the whole 
 and for the whole. A society cannot properly be called 
 religious because a part of it is religious. A Christian 
 Clergy is a true and fruitful element in a Christian 
 Church, but it does not in itself constitute a Chris- 
 tian Church, much less a Christian Nation. The true 
 purpose and Constitution of a Christian Society is 
 set forth in very different terms by St. Paul in the 
 Epistle to the Ephesians : " That we . . . may grow up 
 in all things unto Him which is the head, even Christ ; 
 from whom all the body fitly framed and knit together, 
 through that which every joint supplieth, according 
 to the working in due measure of each several part, 
 
I90 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. VIII. 
 
 maketh the increase of the body unto the building up of 
 itself in love." ^ 
 
 I have laid stress upon this thought, because I seem 
 to detect in the laity, while they are quick to resent 
 clerical dictation or encroachment, a tendency to let 
 the clergy perform for them at least a part of their 
 duty ; to make them their Vicars, as the great Mona- 
 steries did with poor priests in the Middle Ages, for 
 the discharge of certain of their religious functions. 
 But it is not safe to neglect one part of what claims 
 the whole life, if it is a reality at all. To omit the 
 outward realization of the Communion of Saints is to 
 weaken its influence upon thought and action. People 
 who are content to go to church by deputy may well 
 be tempted to think they can depute other activities 
 of the Christian life as well. Facilis descensus. And 
 if the clergy cannot rightly offer public worship to God 
 on your behalf without you, much less can any ministry 
 of theirs take the place of your private prayer and 
 conscious communion with God, which is the spring 
 and the renewal of spiritual life. No one and nothing 
 can take the place of that. It is possible to be too 
 busy even with well-doing to do it really well ; to be 
 anxious and troubled about many things, and yet to 
 miss the one thing needful, the gracious presence of 
 the Master. And that no man can win and keep for 
 us. " No man may deliver his brother, nor make 
 agreement to God for him." We shall not be asked 
 in that Day whether we have been priests or laymen — 
 1 Eph. iv. 15, 16. 
 
Lect. VIII.] SOME PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS 191 
 
 for there will not be a different rule and measure 
 for one and the other — but whether we have tried 
 to mould our lives as disciples of Christ, and the 
 true brethren of all men. There will be a very 
 stringent test of orthodoxy for those who are to be 
 saved ; even the hpdy] Sofa, child and parent of courage 
 and humility, which dares to see Him as He is, and 
 so to grow like Him. The proof of right belief will 
 be right action. The sentence of acceptance or re- 
 jection is, " Inasmuch as ye did it — or did it not — 
 unto one of the least of these My brethren." Yet 
 we must remember that the act of charity is the 
 outward, visible sign of a Sacrament ; the cup of cold 
 water does not lose its reward, for that it is given 
 " in a Name because ye are Christ's." 
 
 I have spoken of the Judgment as future ; but 
 it is as true, and perhaps more profitable, to think 
 of it as passing upon our lives daily and hourly in 
 the present. We are asked now if we are doing 
 our best to make the world Christian by being Chris- 
 tians ourselves in the wide and not in the narrow 
 sense. 
 
 3. Since I began to deliver these Lectures, more 
 than one person has asked me, " But what remedy 
 do you propose for the conditions you describe ? " I 
 have been quite rightly told that I raise more questions 
 than I solve. That is, of course, inevitable in dealing 
 with such a subject as I have chosen, especially when the 
 preacher has no better equipment of knowledge and 
 character than I can claim. But it was also my deliberate 
 
192 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. VIII. 
 
 purpose to raise more questions than I can answer, 
 in the hope of getting some of them answered by wiser 
 and better people than myself; and in the hope of 
 raising doubts whether we are going the right way 
 in our attempts to answer others. I desire to make 
 people, especially people in Oxford, discontented, to 
 make them think and wonder and inquire whether 
 all is well, and if all is not well, how it is to be 
 mended ; and I shall have succeeded so far, if my 
 words help, even in a small degree, in bringing the 
 fine intellect and character of Oxford to give itself to 
 the solution of the riddles which perplex and threaten 
 us. But on the other hand, I wish publicly to record 
 my conviction that the most and the hardest of these 
 problems cannot be solved at all — directly ; that the 
 methods we are tempted to use with them are, as 
 I have said, methods which treat symptoms, and leave 
 the root of the mischief untouched. Whenever we 
 try to cure a particular social evil by dead lift, by 
 legislation merely, or the expenditure of money, we 
 commonly find that we create a new trouble and 
 perhaps a worse ; we are beset by two hydra-heads 
 for one. For instance, it is idle to rail at economic 
 laws, it is ruinous to disregard or transgress them ; 
 because, so long as men are governed by the principle 
 of selfishness, economic laws are the correct formula 
 for recording and foretelling their mutual relations. 
 There is no lasting escape from them, either in blinding 
 ourselves to their cogency, or in artificially exempting 
 limited areas from their operation. But Christian 
 
Lect. VIII.] SOME PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS 193 
 
 thought has learned to look upon Miracles as the 
 manifestation of the Divine Will transcending natural 
 laws for a moral purpose. And I believe the Miracle 
 which can alone deliver us from the inexorable tyranny 
 of economic laws is the influence of Christ upon Human 
 character. 
 
 I fear that in saying this I may disappoint some 
 of my hearers. I must at least renounce all claim 
 to be a prophet for those who look for a speedy and 
 dramatic solution of our difiiculties ; a millennium 
 dating from to-morrow or next year. To such, the 
 Reformation I propose will appear tedious and common- 
 place. And so, in a sense, it is, inasmuch as I have 
 no novel or startling message. The Gospel I am trying 
 to preach is near nineteen centuries old ; the way to 
 its fulfilment is long and laborious, and we have almost 
 forgotten that it is heroic. Though men should em- 
 brace it to-day, neither we who are met here, nor our 
 sons, nor our grandsons, would see its full realization ; 
 yet I know that its acceptance would be the first 
 step, the step that counts, in the redemption of the 
 World from moral evil, and gradually from much of 
 physical and material evil as well. If all the men 
 and women who call themselves Christians could simply 
 do the good they know, and eschew the evil they know, 
 for Christ's sake, the aspect of social and economic 
 problems would be so changed that we have no right 
 to suppose that they would remain insoluble. And the 
 way, I believe the only way, to that change is the 
 training of Christian character in the individual, and 
 
 
 
194 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. VIII. 
 
 the formation of Christian public opinion, sure of itself 
 and not afraid to speak. 
 
 4. Christian public opinion, the expression of the 
 Spirit of Christ in the united will, emotion, and intellect 
 of human societies, has wrought, and is working, 
 miracles. It has raised the standard of purity, of 
 honesty, of loving-kindness ; and above all, and in- 
 cluding all, it has established the sense of brotherhood, 
 of mutual obligation and responsibility. But it has 
 not had its perfect work. It has been paralyzed by 
 timidity, the fear of persecution and ridicule, the fear 
 of plain speaking ; it has been seduced by temptation, 
 the personal desire for ease and pleasure, the corporate 
 desire for power and wealth. But more than all, it has 
 been weakened by division, and obscured by contro- 
 versy and by an exaggerated sense of the paramount 
 duty of withstanding erring brethren to the face because 
 they are to be blamed. The greatest and most deadly 
 effect of controversy is not that it embitters, but that 
 it confuses. While Christianity seemed to hold the 
 field, Christians have sometimes, in all sincerity, been 
 so much occupied with minor differences that they have 
 forgotten the real issue. But surely for us to-day, 
 unless we wilfully blind ourselves to the signs of the 
 times, that issue is clear and definite. The alternative 
 has always been, but now it is very plainly between 
 Christian and non-Christian. 
 
 On one side stands the World, the principle of 
 Selfishness. But here we must be on our guard against 
 labelling people, or sets of people, who do not agree 
 
Lect. VIII.] SOME PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS 195 
 
 with us " the World," and treating them as enemies. 
 That may be Old Testament Religion, but it is not 
 Gospel. " We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but 
 against principalities, against powers, against the rulers 
 of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wicked- 
 ness in high places." ^ 
 
 On one side stands the World, and on the other 
 the Disciples — that is, all who in Belief accept the 
 Incarnation and what it implies, and in Practice take 
 Christ's teaching as their rule, His life as their pattern, 
 and Himself as their motive and their strength. The 
 belief and the practice are inseparable ; the Life is 
 the only test and guarantee of the soundness of the 
 Creed. 
 
 We cannot ask more than that of the brethren ; and 
 we may not ask less, if we believe that in Him alone 
 we have life, and that His coming was the beginning of 
 the full and final revelation. 
 
 Now if we accept ex animo this definition of 
 Christianity, it must make a notable change in our 
 relation to Christians of other denominations ; and 
 it will bring home to us with new force the saying 
 of our Lord, " He that is not against us is on our part." 
 These words are commonly interpreted in practice to 
 mean that we may join with Eoman Catholics and 
 Protestant Nonconformists in social and moral work ; 
 but they must mean more than that: we must join 
 with them also in the definitely Eeligious work of 
 maintaining the essential unity of the Christian Creed 
 
 ' Eph. vi. 12. 
 
196 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. VIII. 
 
 and Life ; that is, if we wish Christianity in any form 
 to rule the World. 
 
 The common objection to such union of Religious 
 work by diflfering sects is that it involves a sacrifice 
 of Principle. That objection I would try to answer 
 in two ways. First, with the history of Christian 
 disunion before us, we are bound to examine ourselves 
 stringently as to what we mean by " Principle," and 
 inquire whether we are called on to give up certain 
 things we value highly for the sake of the strength 
 of Unity; and I think we ought to be prepared to 
 go some way for that end. But second, we are not 
 called upon to give up anything which is really 
 " Principle," anything that is truly a means of Grace 
 for us. An external and mechanical uniformity in 
 worship and in the minor details of belief is now, 
 humanly speaking, impossible ; and we are beginning 
 to question if it be desirable or necessary. ^ If we 
 once admit that a man can be truly a Christian in 
 any Church or sect but our own, we have surrendered 
 the whole position ; and surely we all admit that. 
 Every man is permitted and bound to adopt the 
 symbols in which Eternal Truth comes with life and 
 power to his own soul. Christ comes to the Roman 
 Catholic in Confession and the Mass ; He comes to the 
 Presbyterian in the bare-walled kirk, the unfettered 
 prayer, the infrequent and solemn Communion ; to us He 
 comes in the stately, reasonable services of our Church, 
 with their appeal neglecting, as it seems to us, neither 
 the senses nor the intellect. And if He comes to all, 
 
Lect. VIII.] SOME PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS -i-^i 
 
 all are one, for He is one. And none may despise 
 his fellow or his fellow's religion ; for " No man can 
 say that Jesus is the Lord but through the Holy 
 Ghost." 
 
 The union of the sanctified life goes beyond forms 
 of ecclesiastical government ; it is something higher 
 and deeper than the questions of doctrine and worship 
 which divide us. If we are really trying to live the 
 Christian life, to be true followers of Him who, when 
 He was reviled, reviled not again, when He suffered, 
 threatened not, then we are in the truest and deepest 
 sense promoting the unity of the Church of Christ, 
 and claiming brotherhood with all those who are doing 
 the like in all parts of Christendom. 
 
 It is to these, the real Christians in every Church 
 and sect and denomination, that God has committed 
 the task of bringing mankind back to Him. Such 
 a body of Christians exists, as we testify Sunday by 
 Sunday, when we speak in the Bidding Prayer of 
 " Christ's holy Catholic Church, that is, the whole 
 congregation of Christian people dispersed throughout 
 the whole World." But they are estranged and divided, 
 they are suspicious and discouraged. If only they 
 could come to know and understand one another — to 
 forget their differences, and remember only that they 
 are one in Christ Jesus ! 
 
 I understand that it has been said of me that I 
 draw too dark a picture of the conditions of life in 
 Christian lands. I fear it is not so, but I know too 
 that there is another side to the picture. Christianity 
 
198 THE REPROACH OF THE GOSPEL [Lect. VIII. 
 
 is not a Failure, except when we compare it with what 
 it might have been, what yet shall be. For as it has 
 been the salt of the world, so it is the hope of the 
 world ; and the Spirit of Love is even now work- 
 ing towards its perfect consummation. If I did not 
 believe that, I should lose faith in God and man. 
 And without faith, I should not have had the 
 patience or the effrontery to write and deliver these 
 Lectures. 
 
 Let me end, then, by trying to set before you my vision 
 of the days that are coming — a vision which, I trust, is 
 not altogether fancy. I see the rise of a new Religious 
 Order, the greatest that the World has known, drawn 
 from all nations and all classes, and, what seems 
 stranger yet, from all Churches. Its members bear 
 no distinctive habit ; no distinctive name, if it be 
 not the humble name of Disciples. Yet they are 
 known to each other, and their knowledge is strength, 
 for they are all the men and women who are not afraid 
 to confess Christ both with their lips and in their 
 lives. Their Rule is brief and simple ; it has but 
 two clauses, " Bear ye one another's burdens, and so 
 fulfil the Law of Christ." Their common Creed is a 
 belief in the Person of Christ and in His power to make 
 men like Him. In their common worship they are 
 united in spirit, though not, it may be, in place and 
 ritual. Each is loyal to the Church which brings 
 his soul nearest to God ; yet does not judge his brother 
 who finds another way the best. For they have learned 
 that God, who is one, fulfils Himself in many ways, 
 
Lect. VIII.] SOME PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS 199 
 
 and that the bond that joins them is stronger than 
 the outward symbols which divide them. 
 
 And, as I look, it seems to me that their brother- 
 hood has changed the aspect of the World. The 
 outward change is notable here and there. Monstrous 
 wealth is gone, with its apparatus of luxury and 
 ostentation ; and miserable poverty and degradation 
 are gone, with their apparatus of tavern and jail 
 and workhouse. But Mankind still go about their 
 business and their pleasure ; there is still toil and 
 rest, still joy and sorrow, still success and failure. 
 Yet there is rest and reward for the toiler ; the mourner 
 is comforted ; there is no arrogance in success, no 
 bitterness in failure ; because Christians have learned, 
 and mankind is learning, that the cause of every man is 
 the cause of all men, and the Cause of God. 
 
 THE END 
 
PRINTED BT 
 
 WILLIAM CLOWES AKD SONS, LmiTED. 
 
 LONDON AND BECCLES. 
 
K^